Bullets bitten by Snakes

The Cairns Taipans maintained pace for a top two finish in NBL23, defeating the Brisbane Bullets on Thursday night with the 107-81 road win.

The Bullets had five free throw attempts to 23 in the first half on the way to a 55-37 half-time lead. The Taipans went to the foul line 26/35 to 11/13 by Brisbane along with collecting 50 rebounds to 31 including 14 at the offensive end to four as they went on to a 26-point win.

That helped the Snakes to 13 second chance points, 52 points in the paint and 20 points from the 16 turnovers forced on the Bullets.

Tyler Johnson was a shining light for the Bullets with a strong performance and season best 32 points, four assists and four steals, but there was only one other Brisbane player in double figures.

Kody Stattmann played a fourth quarter cameo for 10 points while Jason Cadee had eight points and three assists. Bullets coach Greg Vanderjagt couldn’t hide his understandable disappointment afterwards.

"It was incredibly disappointing. I thought we'd had a good preparation even with some guys in and out practice that impacts that."

"The most disappointing thing was that we just got outworked. They just played harder than us, we talked about it in the locker room about what the strengths of Cairns are and they are playing good basketball right now,” Vanderjagt added.

It was Bul Kuol who got aggressive in the opening stages with six quick points to help Cairns to the 9-2 lead to already force Greg Vanderjagt into a timeout after two minutes.

Jason Cadee hit a three coming out of that timeout and Tyler Johnson hit the floor to add seven points, but the Taipans maintained their edge and forced the Bullets into six turnovers to lead 24-18 at quarter-time.

Andrew White III scored Brisbane's first five points of the second quarter to keep the home team in touch, but Cairns soon went on a run scoring 11 straight points to open up an 11-point lead.

Brisbane made a brief flurry, but another 9-0 Taipans run saw the lead grow to 20 and only Johnson's 15 points for the Bullets limited the damage.

The Snakes still led 55-37 at the main break on the back of going 18/23 to 4/5 at the foul line with both teams combining for 6/31 from beyond the arc.

The Taipans started the second half scoring 11 of the first 15 points to suddenly see their lead extend to 27.

Ben Ayre hit a triple soon after and scored inside again to push the Cairns advantage out to 32, before the Snakes went into three quarter-time still leading 83-56.

There were some encouraging signs in the fourth for Brisbane including a couple of triples and 10 points from Kody Stattmann and an alley-oop finish from Matthew Johns, but the Snakes rolled on to a 26-point win.

The Bullets are back at Nissan Arena next Wednesday night against the Sydney Kings.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 14

BRISBANE BULLETS 81 (Johnson 32, Stattmann 10, Cadee 8)

CAIRNS TAIPANS 107 (Waardenburg 24, Hogg 23, Ayre 20) 

BOX SCORE