Preview: NBL25 R2 Away v Illawarra Hawks

After almost snatching the season-opener, Brisbane Bullets’ Head Coach Justin Schueller is happy with the response this week and can't wait to take on the Illawarra Hawks on Friday night.

The Bullets are on the road again this week to take on the Illawarra Hawks in Wollongong with both teams coming off a similar preparation having been part of the double-header last Saturday at Perth's HBF Stadium.

The Hawks were impressive in their own 27-point win against the Cairns Taipans, but for Schueller this week has all been about ensuring the Bullets come out on Friday to play how he expects from the outset.

"It is too long a week for me in all honesty, the game finished earlier than normal on Saturday and I was ready for us to play again by Sunday," Schueller said.

"The good thing out of any loss is that it makes you look at the key areas you need to improve on and that's what we've done.

"I'm really looking forward to the response we'll get and getting back to playing a Bullets away of basketball because the other night wasn’t us. Now we get the opportunity to go back and show our identify of who we want to be, and make our fans proud again."

On the back of what happened on Saturday, Schueller couldn’t fault the way the Bullets have responded in a couple of practice sessions back in Brisbane since and the way everyone has put their hands up in the review.

He now likes the way they are looking in preparation for Friday with an eye to responding against the Hawks.

"The response that we've received is what we would expect after a poor showing like we had," Schueller said.

"We reviewed everything from top down and looked internally at everything with how we operated with that one, and we can only move forward and that's what our focus has been this week.

"We'll take our lumps, video was very pointed and there were some key areas there that we understand weren’t at the level. Now from a preparation point I couldn’t be happier with the response to date but we still have two preparation points before we play.

"The boys definitely have their edge back, have the fire that we're used to seeing and I'm looking forward to the boys getting out there on Friday."

While the Bullets did outscore the Breakers 31 points to 12 in the last six minutes on Saturday, what Schueller couldn’t accept was what they did to be 26 points behind to start with.

He still doesn’t know why it happened, but if there is a positive it is that the Bullets may have got their worst performance out of the way nice and early with 28 games in the season to go.

"We're big on the why and we're still a little unknown on the why for that performance, but we're hoping it is a bit of an outlier for us in that respect," Schueller said.

"At the same time, every team is going to have a loss at some point in the season that you wish you didn’t play that way and that's already happened for us.

"It's probably at a timely point because pre-season went reasonably well so now we have the opportunity to get ourselves back on track.

"There's no greater thing for a group than being able to play a game and rectify things so we can't wait to get to Illawarra and get into this game."

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Illawarra Hawks

Tip off: 7:30pm (AEST), Friday 27 September, 2024

Where: WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel and Kayo