Bannan's career night not quite enough for Bullets

Despite a career best night from Josh Bannan, the Brisbane Bullets weren’t quite able to overcome the New Zealand Breakers at Spark Arena in the last game of the regular season, with the home team winning 103-87.

The Bullets knew coming into the game at Spark Arena on Friday night a win was needed to lock in an NBL Finals spot in what was their last game of the regular season.

Brisbane never kept fighting the entire way including rookie power forward Bannan putting up a career-high 29 points on 12/14 shooting from the floor with 4/4 from three-point territory, but the home team just wouldn’t be denied.

The Breakers also were fighting for their Finals prospects and had the added motivation of a 6000 strong crowd cheering them on to celebrate the career of retiring captain Tom Abercrombie, and they ended up prevailing by 16 points.

The result means that the Bullets finish the season with a 13-15 record but the hopes of playing Finals aren’t totally quashed just yet. That will be decided on Saturday night with the South East Melbourne Phoenix playing the Sydney Kings.

The equation is simple. Should the Phoenix win, then the Bullets will finish ahead of the Kings and make the Finals.

Should Sydney win, then it will be all over for Brisbane and the Kings will make it.

On top of the career-best night from Bannan, Bullets captain Nathan Sobey had to overcome the attention of the New Zealand defence to still have 16 points, six assists and four rebounds.

Mitch Norton took a knock to the face that required stitches, but still had 10 points and three assists in his 26 minutes while Tyrell Harrison contributed eight points and six rebounds despite being in foul trouble.

Chris Smith added nine points and three assists, Aron Baynes seven points and three rebounds, Sam McDaniel four points, Casey Prather two points and five rebounds, and Isaac White two points.

Parker Jackson-Cartwright led the way for the Breakers with 27 points and eight assists with Zylan Cheatham adding 19 points, Izayah Le'afa 15, Mantas Rubstavicius 12 and Finn Delany 11 while Brisbane product Will McDowell-White had eight points, seven rebounds and five assists.

Josh Bannan scored the first basket of the game and then a Mitch Norton three-pointer had the Bullets back in front at 5-4. It remained a tight contest in the opening term until New Zealand scored six straight points to lead by seven.

Brisbane responded with triples to Aron Baynes and Chris Smith heading into quarter-time to cut the Breakers lead back to 26-21.

Smith then opened up the second quarter with another bucket but New Zealand threatened to pull away with the next seven points to lead by 10.

Brisbane had to respond and did including scoring 11 of the game's next 13 points with six of those courtesy of Nathan Sobey. When Isaac White made two free-throws, scores were all square and the Bullets had the momentum after 13-3 run.

However, New Zealand then got rolling again leading into half-time with a 19-4 run of their own including a three-pointer from retiring captain Tom Abercrombie on the half-time buzzer.

That saw the Breakers lead 55-40 going into the break and the Bullets were playing catch up right throughout the second half but they never stopped fighting.

The Bullets were able to gather some momentum midway through the third quarter when scoring seven straight points starting off with two baskets from Bannan.

When Bannan hit a three soon after, the margin was back to six but the Breakers had managed to push it back out to 12 again by three quarter-time.

Brisbane weren’t about to stop fighting and Bannan gave them a sniff with the opening five points of the fourth frame. That turned into a 10-4 run to open the quarter and suddenly it was just a six-point ball game.

Unfortunately for the Bullets, they weren’t able to get closer than that and despite Bannan hitting a couple more late threes, the Breakers kept having the answers on the way to the 16-point win.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 20

BRISBANE BULLETS 87 (Bannan 29, Sobey 26, Norton 10)

NEW ZEALAND BREAKERS 103 (Jackson-Cartwright 27, Cheatham 19, Le'afa 15)

BOX SCORE