DMac looks forward to double chance weekend

The dramatic finish might have taken the spotlight away from the rest of last Wednesday's game, but coach Darryl McDonald was proud of how the Brisbane Bullets competed and is confident they can put in strong showings now over the last four games.

What happened with three minutes to go last Wednesday night on the Gold Coast between the Bullets and 36ers quickly became a hot talking point, but prior to that and the shorthanded Brisbane were competing valiantly against the league-leaders.

That was without Tyrell Harrison, Sam McDaniel, Javon Freeman-Liberty and Alex Ducas on top of the long-term injuries to Casey Prather, Dakota Mathias and Lamar Patterson.

It was just a six-point ball game by half-time before the Sixers did start the second half strongly and then after the scuffle which ultimately saw Terry Taylor, Hunter Maldonado, Tristan Devers and Taine Murray ejected, the game blew out to an eventual 33-point Adelaide win.

The performance itself from the Bullets wasn’t as bad as that final scoreline suggested and there was plenty of positives for coach McDonald to take from it highlighted once more by rookie big man Jacob Holt with 24 points and five rebounds.

Captain Mitch Norton did a strong job on former teammate and five-time MVP Bryce Cotton while having 11 points, six assists, five rebounds and two steals with Devers, Taylor, Maldonado and Murray having their moments before what happened late in the piece.

While McDonald did like how hard his team played while significantly undermanned, ultimately again it was shooting just 37 per cent from the field and 6/33 from deep that cost them any real chance of staying in touch.

"It just comes back to needing to make shots and we were 3/30 before Jack (Purchase) came in and hit three threes and with teams like that (Adelaide), you have to put scoreboard pressure on them and see what happens," McDonald said.

"We just couldn’t do that, but all in all, the one thing I love about the group is that I think we're going to compete, we're going to fight and give everything even if the scoreline doesn’t always show that.

"Especially in this game, I don’t think that reflected how well we competed and I'm playing some guys 35 or something minutes a game, and it gets to a point where they're getting a little bit cooked and when you get tired, all the little things happen.

"There might be no box outs, you might miss a pin down or something because your brain is gone, but I can't ask for nothing more from these guys because we're coming out and competing.

"It was a six-point game at half-time and then again at the start of the third quarter we missed a couple and they get out and score, and i had to call a quick timeout and that's what I don't want to have to do, but it is what it is."

The Bullets now have had time to regroup not only from that, but from a hectic schedule where the injuries continued to mount ahead of two games this weekend.

That starts on Friday night on the road to the sixth placed Tasmania JackJumpers in Hobart before the Bullets return to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Sunday afternoon to host the Cairns Taipans.

With four games in the season remaining and with the Taipans two games clear of the bottom placed Bullets, there does still remain a chance for them to avoid the wooden spoon should they firstly be able to snap their current nine-game losing streak.

McDonald is hopeful of some players returning from injury for this weekend too including Harrison, McDaniel and Ducas even though they will be without the suspended Taylor against the JackJumpers.

McDonald is also looking at the games against Tasmania and Cairns as winnable for the Bullets.

"Hopefully we get all three of them back and I wouldn’t say it's a tough weekend, it's a weekend where we have two teams that we think we can get," McDonald said.

"Then if you add those three in there, I think it helps the cause but we've gotta just make sure we get them back and they're all on par to come back this week and hopefully we have them for the Tassie-Cairns weekend.

"Then we just have to see what happens, man, and it's an opportunity for us to try and get some wins, we go to Tassie and we've already won there, and we've got Cairns at home where we've also won.

"It's a good opportunity to try and get a couple of wins but we definitely need those guys back, and it would be nice to have them."