Preview: NBL25 R13 Home v Cairns Taipans

The Brisbane Bullets return to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Friday night to host the Cairns Taipans in a pre-Christmas Sunshine Stoush set to be closer to full strength and having put together tremendous basketball in 15 of the last 16 quarters.

The Bullets are in their best patch of form for NBL25 over the past four games and that has seen them rack up impressive wins against the Adelaide 36ers, Melbourne United and the South East Melbourne Phoenix.

In those three victories, they were averaging 113.3 points a game to be playing at a fast tempo with an exciting playing style with import trio Casey Prather, Keandre Cook and James Batemon thriving with Mitch Norton running the ship expertly and Tyrell Harrison being a force inside.

Then even in Sydney on Sunday against the Kings, the Bullets put themselves in a strong position to make it four consecutive victories when leading by nine points early in the fourth quarter.

While they ran out of legs in their second game of the round against a fresh opponent and in the absence of Josh Bannan, Deng Adel and Jarred Bairstow, once again there was plenty to like and to build upon.

However, the Bullets have no time to sit back and reflect and be happy with what's achieved, the hard work needs to continue with them currently sitting in seventh position with a 7-8 record with 14 games of their NBL season to go.

The next task is a match up with Queensland rivals the Taipans this Friday night at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in the second Sunshine Stoush contest of the season.

The first meeting was back in Round 7 in Far North Queensland where the Bullets came away with the narrow 92-88 victory with Batemon (21 points, six rebounds, three assists), Cook (18 points, three boards, three assists), Bannan (16 points, six rebounds), Harrison (14 points, 20 boards) and Norton (12 points, two assists) all impressing.

While the Taipans come into the game on Friday night on their own 12-game losing streak, Bullets coach Justin Schueller knows they will come into BEC breathing fire but he's just focused on getting his team up to the level he wants, and expects.

"We're still in that growth point as a group where we're just looking at us and what are the controllables that we can be better at, and go from there," Schueller said.

"Cairns are going to come in hungry and so will we. We need to clap back and continue to take steps forward with how we're playing.

"If a few shots drop in that last game in the fourth quarter and we feel totally different about that one, so we won't let it take us of course of the growth that we've had."

Prather has been in a tremendous run of form for late for the Bullets with the three-time NBL championship winning getting right back to some of the best form of his career while thriving in the Brisbane's faster-tempo style.

In the absence of Bannan, Prather has been starting in the power forward spot and it's been working a treat with him averaging 27.0 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.6 assists over the past five matches.

However, what he saw in the fourth quarter in Sydney on Sunday was some of the Bullets players stop backing themselves to shoot and be aggressive as they had been in the previous 15 quarters of playing winning basketball.

That includes himself and he will be doing everything he can to make sure that's fixed up against the Snakes on Friday night.

"First and foremost a lot of our guys should have backed ourselves a lot more including myself to shoot especially at the end," Prather said.

"I take a lot of ownership about the end part of the game, but any time you control the game as well as we did and take the L, there's a lot of lessons to be learned.

"We've broke the film down and got back to work to make sure we can bounce back against Cairns on our home floor."

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Cairns Taipans

Tip off: 6:30pm (AEST), Friday 20 December, 2024

Where: Brisbane Entertainment Centre

Tickets: Available Here

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel and Kayo