Bullets lock in identity they want to have

Friday wasn’t the resumption of the NBL season the Brisbane Bullets wanted, but coach Stu Lash remains upbeat once Terry Taylor finds his groove, Sam McDaniel settles back in, shots fall a bit more and they get a better whistle.

Coming out of the FIBA break where Tyrell Harrison, Taine Murray and Tohi Smith-Milner were playing with the Tall Blacks and Alex Ducas for the Boomers, the Bullets resumed their season against the now league-leading 36ers in Adelaide on Friday night.

The result was a 25-point defeat in the finish with the Bullets now sitting on a 5-11 record ahead of two games this coming week starting on Thursday away to the Illawarra Hawks and then at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Sunday against the Perth Wildcats.

Lash knows how he wants his team to perform now coming into the second half of the season and remains confident they can find that groove despite things not quite coming together in Adelaide.

"When we went into the break we said we're 0-0 and we'd had a lot of turnover on the roster, and not a lot of time to incorporate that, and we wanted to really just start from day one and put certain goals and metrics in," Lash said.

"That was especially on a defensive standpoint and there are areas we've got to get better, but we held them to 90 and we want to be a defensive minded, physical team and we've got a really strong front court.

"They can get on the o-glass to create extra possessions for us and it might be cliché to take it game by game, but that's the mentality we have to have.

"We understand we don’t have a lot of margin for error and we need to go on a run, and we need to go on a run quickly to stay in the fight here. We'll go back, we'll get to work and then we're at Illawarra before you know it."

While things all over didn’t go to plan in Adelaide on Friday night for the Bullets, ultimately the biggest issue was just not being able to get shots to fall because for the most part Lash couldn't really fault the effort level his team was giving.

The Bullets found themselves 17 points down by half-time while shooting 34 per cent from the field and 2/16 from three-point territory. By the end of the game, they went 33 per cent overall and finishing up 7/35 from long range.

Sometimes it just comes down to shots not falling especially with Mitch Norton, Sam McDaniel, Terry Taylor, Taine Murray, Jacob Holt and Tohi Smith-Milner combining to go 5/29.

"I thought we did some good things, but it's a shot making game and we just didn’t make shots through those first three quarters," Lash said.

"I thought we had good ball movement, and created good looks and I thought we were competing, but we just literally couldn’t make shots.

"There were a couple of things defensively we definitely need to tidy up too, but really it just came down to where we were at from a field goal shooting percentage standpoint, and it was a rough shooting night."

One on-going concern for Lash is that the Bullets were once again on the wrong end of a significant foul count discrepancy against the 36ers with Adelaide attempting 28 free throws to just nine for Brisbane.

It has now been an issue for a while for the Bullets and over the course of the past seven games, Brisbane have only attempted 110 free throws while their opponents have gone to the line 160 times.

In three games where there has been the biggest discrepancy against Adelaide on Friday and then going back to losses to Melbourne and Sydney, those three teams took 90 foul shots and the Bullets just 28.

Lash knows it's a trend that can't continue whatever the reasons are for it.

"We'll have to take a look at it but there's no doubt that a 28 to nine free-throw count is something that you red flag," Lash said.

"It's always a stat that stands out pretty quickly, but until you actually go back and watch it you're not sure, but I thought there was a lot of inconsistencies again on certain bang bang calls that we don’t get, that maybe go the other way."

New import forward Terry Taylor also made his NBL debut with the Bullets on Friday night and Lash saw enough encouraging signs that once he finds his groove after three points, seven rebounds, two assists and two steals that he can have a significant impact.

"I thought Terry's effort was really solid and I think just the touch and feel, and getting a feel of how the game is played is probably where he needs to improve," Lash said.

"But he's going to get on the glass, he's going to put heat on the rim and he's going to play with physicality, and I think he's going to have a good impact on this league."

Another positive on Friday night was the successful return from injury of defensive maestro Sam McDaniel following the ankle injury he suffered in the second game of the season in Cairns.

His welcome back gift was the job guarding five-time MVP Bryce Cotton on Friday night. He did his best to limit his influence despite Adelaide's big win with Lash confident McDaniel's offensive game will find its flow too after shooting 2/10 for his six points.

"We all know what Smack is capable of certainly on the defensive end of the floor, but it was his first game since the second game of the season and he goes 2/10 from the field," McDaniel said.

"He'll tell you that he needs to be better with that, but I thought his defensive compete on Bryce was there, and his effort's there.

"I can see three or four of those shots that he took just bounced in and out, and were good looks for him, and when you haven’t played in a while there's a touch and a feel that has to come back. He needs to get that rhythm back a little bit, but I was happy with his effort."