Seven days after being hammered by 40 in Perth, the under-manned Hawks managed their first road win over the Taipans in almost five years and ended the Snakes’ 17-year run of wins in home openers.

With injured duo  big AJ Ogilvy (ankle) and Kevin White (back) watching on from the bench, Todd Blanchfield led the way with a career-high 32 points, including 7-12 from three-point range, to go with six rebounds, four steals and two assists.

It continues a red-hot start to the season for the sharpshooter, who shifted south from the Kings in order to re-find his scoring groove under Beveridge.

“At every training session Bevo's on my case about being aggressive and being a scorer and looking to attack,” Blanchfield told Fox Sports post-match.

“I've been trying to get back to that mindset. We knew we just needed to play for each other.

“We put up a pretty good effort against Melbourne [last] Friday night so to go over to Perth and play the way we did was pretty disappointing. We had a good week at training, we knew what we needed to fix and we came out and got the job done.” 

Brian Conklin also produced a Herculean effort in Ogilvy's absence, finishing with 21 points, six rebounds and four assists after his night looked over when he badly rolled his ankle early in the third quarter.

He left the court but was quickly strapped up and returned, adding 11 more points to his tally, as the Hawks snapped their Cairns hoodoo and gave themselves a sniff of a 2-2 start when they host Brisbane in Wollongong on Saturday.

Jordair Jett had nine of his 21 points in the final term and also finished with six assists, while Cedric Jackson had a handy 12 points.

Star import Melo Trimble backed up his 32-point effort on debut last week with 28 points and five assists for the hosts but DJ Newbill was the only other Taipan in double figures with 22 points and seven assists.

Blanchfield and Dave Andersen had early triples as the visitors shot out to a 10-2 lead before Trimble had back to back threes of his own to cut the margin back to two.

Blanchfield completed a four-point play and traded threes with Newbill, but the Snakes import had the final say of the quarter with his second three and a lay-up on the buzzer to take a one-point lead for his side.

Trimble had four points from the stripe and a three on a 10-5 run to start the second term as the lead went out to five.

Conklin continued to be a go-to man inside, going three of four from the line to level up at 44 apiece and finishing with eight points for the term to cut the deficit back to one at the main break. 

He went down early in the third but there was no stopping Blanchfield who had seven straight points, including his fourth triple, to give his side a six-point lead.

Conklin returned to put the final stamp on the term, dropping the final three points as his side led by four at the final break, and adding a long range bomb early in the fourth. Blanchfield followed it up with two more before closing the show from the free-throw line.