Preview: NBL25 R17 Home v Cairns Taipans

The Brisbane Bullets remain right in the top six NBL race and despite being a little shorthanded still, play host to the Cairns Taipans on Friday night with a chance to further close in on a post-season position.

The Bullets back up hosting the Perth Wildcats on Wednesday night by remaining at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Friday to host the Taipans in a Sunshine Stoush which naturally has that bit of added spice with the match up of the Queensland rivals.

While the Bullets are still battling on the injury front with Tyrell Harrison, Rocco Zikarsky and Deng Adel still missing the clash with the Snakes while Jarred Bairstow, Sam McDaniel and James Batemon have already seen their seasons ended.

However, there's still everything for Brisbane to play for coming up against the Taipans with the Bullets currently sitting on a 10-13 record as they attempt to chase the teams just above them which includes the Adelaide 36ers at 10-12 and Tasmania JackJumpers at 12-12.

The Bullets host a Taipans team that might be sitting in last place at 4-18 and has lost 17 of their last 18 games, but the first three showings of 2025 have been vastly improved from Cairns.

The Snakes scored the shock upset against the league-leading Illawarra Hawks before pushing both the Sydney Kings and South East Melbourne Phoenix to the brink ahead of coming to Brisbane on Friday night.

The Bullets will regain guards Emmett Naar and Kye Savage for the Friday night match up with Cairns while Harrison, Zikarsky and Adel all remain sidelined.

That does strengthen the Brisbane back court to offer some ball handling and playmaking support for captain Mitch Norton, which might come in handy after as a team the Bullets did have 20 turnovers from which the Wildcats scored 32 points on Wednesday.

While Schueller knows his team misses the sheer size and presence of Harrison and Zikarsky, there's no point crying over what's not there and finding a way to get the job done against the Snakes.

"Casey and Banno battled in particular really hard and had 11 boards each but the rim protection with Ty and Rocco hurts," Schueller said.

"Both those guys are guys we like at the four as well and we love having them as a tag team, but having Ty out and that lack of depth in the big department definitely hurts.

"Credit to Perth, they came out in that second quarter and really took us out of our starting spots on offence and we didn’t find enough answers to be able to use that pressure to our advantage.

"They're the things that I think we have control on and that's less about the bigs and more about us just getting to our spots. There's a lot to unpack from this one, but at the same time we've got to move forward pretty quick and get our minds right for Cairns."

Against the Wildcats on Wednesday night, eight Bullets players were out on the court for at least 12 minutes while each starter played at least 27 including Prather's 33, Bannan's 32 and Cook's 31.

That's just the nature of the beast and won't change too much on Friday against Cairns with Harrison, Adel and Zikarsky still out, but Schueller will look for his team to control the tempo of the contest a bit longer.

"We did have to play guys in big minutes and it's a natural fatigue that can occur with the intensity that the game is," Schueller said.

"Perth has to play at a pace where you've got to keep going and going, and now going into this next one Cairns isn’t too dissimilar in how they play.

"There's things there that we need to be able to lean into to say how we can control the tempo of the game. How we lean into that a bit more is going to be key to us."

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Cairns Taipans

Tip off: 6:30pm (AEST), Friday 17 January, 2025

Where: Brisbane Entertainment Centre

Tickets: Available Here

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel and Kayo