Veteran Cairns forward Martin Cattalini believes the club's 81-77 victory over the Perth Wildcats has offered the side some hope of a fairytale place in this season's playoffs.
Describing the even team performance, where four players scored double-figure tallies, as a well-deserved reward for hard work, Cattalini said the result will restore belief the Taipans can win close games after they narrowly failed against Wollongong in their last outing.
"We deserved that win," Cattalini declared. "We've had it pretty hard as most of you will know what's gone on with the club and we have continued to work our arse off during the time that other people have gone missing."
"Its a little reward for us and it was good to finally get that win and get some self belief in us."
"We have to run the ten people we got and the ten people we got are pretty good still," he added referring to the club's dire financial situation, which led to the departures of Dave Thomas and Larry Abney and former coach Alan Black.
"(But) we're still a pretty competitive team ... we've still got a pretty good list, so I'm confident we can upset a few more teams as well."
Cattalini said if the club, currently ninth on the NBL ladder with an 8-14 record, did make the play-offs, then the team would look back at this match against a highly-fancied Wildcats side as the turning point in a disastrous season so far.
"We've got a glimmer of hope of play-offs, we haven't given up that prospect yet, so it'll be tough to do it," said Cattalini, a former Wildcat who may even be returning to Perth at the end of the campaign.
"That's what we're looking at and if we can just continue stringing a few wins on, we might sneak in there."
"(But) I'm going to sell the rights for a Disney movie if we make the playoffs," he admitted with a smile.
Cairns' coach Mark Beecroft felt the Wildcats, fresh from a confidence-boosting 99-90 away victory over the pacesetting South Dragons last week, may have felt the Taipans would be pushovers on their home patch.
"I think when you look at our group coming in and you look at our record it's sometimes probably easy to be complacent," Beecroft said.
"But we had a game plan coming in and I think to the most part we stuck to what we were trying to achieve and I think the guys believed in that."
And, having achieved the first objective in a horror road trip that sees Cairns also play the 36ers on Saturday night, Beecroft feels his players have the belief to become just the fifth side in competition history to win both legs in Perth and Adelaide on consecutive nights.
"There's been some nights (at training) where it's been really flat, but coming into this weekend, no team's done this trip since 2003 and I believe it was always going to be a challenge," Beecroft said.
"But having gone through what we've been through in the last month we were excited about it," he said.