The Ringwood Hawks are a team known for their fighting spirit but their horror season continued on Sunday with a 19 point loss on the road to the Waverley Falcons.

Sunday’s game was Ringwood’s 13th game of the season and there was excitement as the Hawks had the rare occurance of having most of the team in uniform ready to play. The Hawks have only played 2 games this season with their top 9 players in uniform and this season defining game was going to be the third.

All that changed though in the pre-game when the Hawks leading scorer Jacob Gibson pulled out of the team with lingering knee soreness. With Gibson out, the Hawks needed to find an extra 22 points and early on it looked like Matt Snow would provide them himself. Snow hit his first 8 shots and kept his team in the game but a late push from the Falcons right on half time left the Hawks trailing by 5.

The third quarter would prove to be the problem for the Hawks who left their intensity in the change room. The Hawks game plan of slowing down Falcons imports Deondre McWhorter and Dylan Travis simply was not working and the deficit slowly grew. To rub salt in to their wounds, the Hawks went ice cold with their shooting, including a disastrous foul shooting display that saw Ringwood miss 17 of their 36 attempts.

The Hawks fought out the game but could never get the game back in to single figure, eventually falling by 19 points.

“We focused on 4 areas and to be brutally honest, we failed in every area.” Hawks Coach Ken Harrington said.

“We wanted to win the rebounding, slow down their imports and be aggressive. We did not get close to achieving any of these, that’s how you lose by 20.”

The Hawks hope to get Gibson back for next weekend as the Hawks have a double header weekend starting on Saturday night at Eltham and then returning home to play the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence on Sunday.

“It is very clear what areas we need to be better in.” Harrington said.

“If we clean a few things up, we will have a chance to win most games including these two this weekend.”

RINGWOOD 78 (Snow 21, Miller 20, Sturt 9, Roberts 8) lost to WAVERLEY FALCONS 97 (McWhorter 30, Travis 18) at Waverley Basketball Stadium.

In the earlier women's game, Megan Mullings (27 points, 10 rebounds) led the Hawks to a nail biting 71-67 win over the Waverley Falcons after squandering a 12 point fourth quarter lead.