Taipan "starting to see the reward" for his work

Cairns Taipans star Jack McVeigh believes Kyrin Galloway improving his off-court habits is key to his career-best NBL form and he might need to continue to step up should Sam Waardenburg again be sidelined.

In the first quarter alone, during Monday's home fixture with Brisbane, the front court pair of Galloway and Waardenburg combined for 20 points on perfect 9/9 shooting Then by half-time, the pair had 27 on 12/13 shooting, as the Snakes led 47-35.

Cairns ultimately won 88-83, to make it two consecutive wins and improve to 7-17 on the season, moving clear of the last placed 6-19 Bullets. But it was soured by Waardenburg rolling his ankle on the foot of Brisbane forward Terry Taylor in the third period.

Coach Adam Forde isn’t sure on the prognosis of his captain just yet, with the only good news that it wasn’t the same ankle that saw him miss the opening 16 games of NBL26.

"Well he's in good spirits but we'll get the scan tomorrow and it's the other foot which is good because he's a little bit stronger in that one than the other one," Forde said in Monday's post-game press conference.

"It's frustrating when you're talking about trying to build a little bit of momentum and even during the game, and I was guilty of it too, when we saw Waardenburg down and get carried off, it rattled the group and it got to me too.

"When you're trying to build a little bit of momentum and you look down to the end of the bench and Mo's (Mawot Mag) out, Reyne's (Smith) out, Al's (Higgins-Titsha) out and Waardenburg's sitting there with a foot in a tub of ice, it's frustrating and we've gotta regroup and keep moving forward."

McVeigh has enjoyed playing the three spot alongside Galloway and Waardenburg, with the former particuraly impressing the Australian Boomer, after contributing 32 points on 12/16 shooting in wins over Melbourne and Brisbane.

"KG the last couple of months has fixed some stuff up off the court and his habits are getting better, his eating is getting better and he's lifting smarter, and getting in there and getting more work in," McVeigh said.

"The two go hand in hand and how you treat your life is how the game will bounce back and reward you so he's starting to see the reward for putting in that work over the last couple of months.

"So that's been good to see and it's good to see him going out there being aggressive and improving each week."

Forde also gives credit to the leadership of McVeigh and will continue to call on Galloway even more should Waardenburg now be sidelined.

"KG's really starting to flourish with that type of mentorship and mateship and teammateship or however you want to categorise it, and he's got some talent about him and we just have to make sure we can build some consistency around him," Forde said.

"We want to try and get him some easy looks which we were able to tonight especially in the first quarter and depending on the status with where we're at with Waardenburg, we may need to rely on him a little bit more.

"Now you move away from the physical component and it becomes a bit more of a mental component to get him to shoulder that load."

Cairns next play New Zealand at HoopsFest on Saturday from 7pm AEDT, live on ESPN.