Townsville have regained north Queensland basketball's bragging rights with a 120-113 victory over Cairns at the Townsville Entertainment Centre.

Kelvin Robertson rediscovered his spark and touch from beyond the arc to star for the home side with a game-high 37 points while Nathan Jawai (28) and Stephan Black (24) were the main contributors for the Taipans.

With both sides pushing hard for the derby win and a much needed points bonus in the run to the finals, tensions simmered between the outfits with plenty of verbal sparring and bodies hitting the floor.

The battle between Taipans star Jawai and Crocs big man Ben Pepper highlighted the opening stages with the talls fighting it out under the boards.

Cairns made the most of a scrappy first quarter shooting performance, taking a 10-point lead thanks to Black and Jawai finding their range and led 27-20 at the break.

The locals came out firing after the break with Townsville product Robertson igniting The Swamp faithful with a 16-point blitz, putting the home side in front 62-50 at the main break.

Townsville continued their hot shooting streak in the third with crowd favourite Corey Williams keeping the Taipans at bay with 12 third quarter points while Black kept his side in the match.

Cairns threatened to mount a major comeback late in the fourth, coming within striking distance before Townsville held their nerve to record the win in front of their pumped up home crowd.

Townsville coach Trevor Gleeson was quick to praise guard Kelvin Robertson's performance but thought his team mates laid the platform.

"Kel is a great shooter when he is wide open but it was unselfish play and that is something that we breed here and the guys were smart to get Kel the ball when he was hot," Gleeson said.

"We started slow but the bench did a hell of a job defensively, got the intensity up and we were able to hit Kelvin with some wide open shots."

"We got a role on in the second quarter with 42 points and that was from our defensive work and getting the ball to the right people at the right time."

Cairns coach Alan Black said his side didn't have the necessary defensive personnel.

"Townsville shot the ball really well and Robertson was on fire I thought we allowed him some open ones to get going and he was pretty hard to stop."

"From the defensive point of view it would have been nice to have Aaron Grabau to defend Williams or stop Robertson and he is a player that we have missed.

"Offensively we have picked up the slack but on the defensive end we have missed our stopper and that has been hard to work around."

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