Bullets find positives in tough trip west

Everything conspired against the Brisbane Bullets as NBL25 resumed last Friday night but coach Justin Schueller saw some positives especially with what some younger players did as they now return home this coming Friday.

The Bullets took some impressive momentum into the FIBA international window with the 21-point victory at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre against the Perth Wildcats including a historic 51-point outburst by James Batemon.

However, the break didn’t end up leaving the Bullets in the best position by the time Friday night's match up with Perth got underway with Jarred Bairstow (ankle), Deng Adel (hand), Josh Bannan (ankle) and Tohi Smith-Milner (concussion) all not making the trip west.

To top that off, by Friday night after getting to Perth, several members of the Brisbane team and coaching staff were feeling sick and Tyrell Harrison was so bad that he was unable to play in the game.

That left the Bullets without five of their full roster members including two starters and the end result was a 28-point defeat at the hands of the Wildcats, but it doesn't mean there weren’t positives.

That included Josh Kunen, Kye Savage and Tristan Devers all coming on to score their first points of their NBL careers.

"I'm proud of our young boys that came in and just gave us something with their effort and energy," Schueller said.

"They had been doing the hard yards day in, day out and we had a lot happen to us this week. For them to come in and get that exposure and experience, that's the positive I take out of it.

"It's still frustrating that midway through that second quarter we were right there and it's an eight-point game, and I didn’t think we closed the half out the way that we needed to.

"It was execution errors, a few gambles, breaking out of things and a lack of discipline which saw the game push out and with the lack of bodies we had, it was always going to get harder and harder as it went on."

Next Star centre Rocco Zikarsky was coming off the best performance of his NBL career in the win two weeks earlier against Perth with 13 points and seven rebounds.

Then with Harrison out in Perth on Friday, Zikarsky made the first start of his 38-game NBL career and he battled hard up against the likes of Keanu Pinder, Izan Almansa and Jesse Wagstaff for 13 points and eight boards.

"As a young athlete does, he had some really great moments with great rim protection and he had eight rebounds in 35 minutes which is the thing we'll go back and look at with him and see if there's some more there for him," Schueller said.

"But to be thrown in the deep end just when we got to shootaround where we didn’t know if Tyrell could play or not, for him to step up and provide that anchor for us was great.

"Josh Kunen as well, he had to play some of the five when he hasn’t had a rep all year at practice in that space. So for those guys to step up and Case doing what he did with us throwing to the four spot and being that solid guy, there's going to be positives out of this."

The Bullets will now be back at home at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre this coming Friday night up against the Adelaide 36ers who they will be playing for the first time in NBL25.

Schueller will be hoping that all the illness is out of his group by then, but it's still a wait and see approach for how the other four injured players are placed for the contest.

"Jarred Bairstow won't be, he's still a fair away but Tohi hopefully should be and he's showing good signs off the concussion," Schueller said.

"Banno was already showing a lot more progress than what we probably first thought originally when they thought it was three to six so we definitely think he's ahead of schedule.

"It's a bit too early to say he'd be back for this next game though. Then we just have to get this illness out of the group and the boys that travelled are the ones who felt it so I'm not sure what that's about."