Matt Gray dominates as the Maitland Mustangs beat Central Coast in NBL1 East

Gray scored 44 points, hitting seven from 12 at the three-point line while also picking up 10 rebounds.

"He was unreal, Matty used to play for that club in youth league and I think it fired him up more," coach Luke Boyle said.

"One of his old team mates came up and told him he was going to have zero for the night so he made sure he put a stop to that.

"The other really good thing at the moment is he's increasing his rebound count every week and he's playing better defence for us too which I think is leading to better offence for him."

Last year's grand finalists have regained form after starting the season slowly and now find themselves inside the competition's top eight.

Boyle said he was happy with the performance even though the side was confident heading in. The Mustangs are away against the Hills Hornets on Saturday night.

"We do expect to win and we're pretty confident we should be able to get this game, for us it's more about the fact that we're pretty versatile," he said.

"We're not a one-dimensional team and if we have to go big we can go big and if we have to go small we can go small because we've got guys who are mobile enough.

"So the versatility coming up against a lot of these teams works in our favour and especially against this team."

The Mustangs are also looking ahead to their round eight match when they host the Centre of Excellence.

Maitland went down to the Basketball Australia side in round two after the Centre of Excellence clawed back to push the game into overtime.

"We want to make sure we keep the momentum coming into that game...they've got a quality young bunch of kids, they're the best juniors across Australia," Boyle said.

"They're always going to be tough, big and athletic...we want to make sure we come out and compete, last time we played them it went into overtime so we want to make sure of this one at home."