This was not a game that will live in the players memories for more than about one hour after the final buzzer, but the Ringwood Hawks did enough against a very undermanned Whittlesea Pacers on Saturday night.

It has been a horror season for the Pacers who have just one win for the season and will likely be demoted out of the Championship division next season. The Hawks though are in a tight battle for a top two spot and saw this game as an opportunity to boost their percentage.

The Hawks came out of the blocks blazing hot at the offensive end of the floor but surprisingly allowed the Pacers to get open shot and to the foul line for some easy points. This allowed to home team to stay reasonably close by quarter time as the Hawks lead by 7 points.

Nathan Truman (25 points) caught fire in the second quarter and punished the Pacers zone defense. Anything that Truman missed was quickly cleaned up by Shaun Clarke (18 rebounds), Trevor Latham (12 points and 15 rebounds) or Matt Fennell (17 points and 6 rebounds). By half time the game was really a formality with Ringwood in complete control by 19 points.

Hawks Coach Ken Harrington was able to substitute his players at will for the remainder of the game; giving everyone a chance to build on their confidence with play offs now just three weeks away.

“It was good that everyone played a minimum of 15 minutes tonight but we must play better than that against the top teams.” Harrington said.

“We can score, there is no doubt about that but we need to improve our defense by about 20%. That’s the area that we can improve on and must improve on in the Finals.”

The 37 point final margin looked impressive enough, but the Pacers were able to score 78 points which was probably too many and gave the Hawks a timely reminder of where their focus may be at practice for the next few weeks.

Mike McCahey has been a consistent performer all year for Ringwood and had another solid game with 19 points while Matt Snowball had 11 and a foul restricted Jacob Gibson chipped in with 15 points in just 16 minutes of court time.

Currently sitting in equal second place, the Hawks have two tough games over the next two weeks that will determine whether they earn that top two finish. The first test is next Sunday at home when the dangerous Diamond Valley Eagles visit the Rings Satdium. The Eagles are out of play-off contention, but would love nothing more than to cause an upset. Game time is 2pm.

Ringwood Hawks 115 (Truman 25, McCahey 19, Fennell 17, Gibson 15, Latham 12, Snowball 11, Clarke 9) defeated Whittlesea Pacers 78 at Mill Park Stadium.