Bullets Fall to 36ers in Adelaide

The Brisbane Bullets have failed to make it. back-to-back wins, going down to the Adelaide 36ers 101-79 at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. 

The Brisbane record is now 11-14 with the defeat leaving the side looking on from the outside out the top four but will be feeling the spots currently held by Sydney Kings (14-12) and the Phoenix (14-13) are gettable still.

Brisbane couldn’t back up their big win two nights ago in Melbourne against the Phoenix, and ended up shooting 31/78 at 39 per cent from the field and 6/30 at 20 per cent from three-point range.

Nathan Sobey top-scored for Brisbane against his former team with 20 points, eight assists, six rebounds and three steals. Matt Hodgson also had 19 points and nine rebounds, Anthony Drmic nine points and Harry Froling nine points, eight rebounds and three assists.

Bullets coach Andrej Lemanis was hoping to avoid an anticipated letdown from his group after being locked down for five days last week, but it proved an unavoidable truth as the game wore on.

"Tonight the impact of what happened to us last week showed. Our strength and conditioning team talked to us about this, and the fact is this time last week we were stuck in our hotel room unable to do anything and had five days of quarantine," Lemanis said. 

"We had one hastily put together practice at the last minute when we were able to do get an exemption so that was always going to catch up with us. The advice we got was that this was the game it would present itself rather than the first game back. 

"The guys were feeling more sore than they normally are and then looking at us play as it unfolded, I started to notice that we looked exhausted. 

"We had some obviously early scout breakdowns so that suggested we weren’t mentally where we needed to be, and then as the game went on physically we lacked a bit of grunt. 

"I can't question their effort and I thought the guys gave everything they had, but it obviously didn’t turn out how we wanted it to."

The Bullets also face the Snakes next, at the Cairns Pop-Up Arena next Saturday.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 16

ADELAIDE 36ERS 101 (Johnson 26, Pinder 19, Giddey 15)

BRISBANE BULLETS 79 (Sobey 20, Hodgson 19, Drmic 9, Froling 9) 

BOX SCORE