Preview: NBL25 R8 Home v Melbourne United

A chance to continue their impressive winning run, wanting to celebrate the 350-game milestone of their captain and to get one back on Melbourne United all means there's no shortage of motivation for the Brisbane Bullets back home on Thursday night.

The Bullets will have their equal shortest turnaround in between games so far this season when backing up from Saturday night's win in Cairns against the Taipans to now hosting United on Thursday at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

The Bullets come into the match up to open Round 8 of NBL25 having now won three of their past four matches for the season and looking to keep that momentum going against a United team they haven’t had much fun against in recent history.

Bullets coach Justin Schueller is glad to have just five days in between games from Saturday's win in Cairns leading into hosting a United team on Thursday who he is hoping to get a first win against having previously been a championship winning assistant coach there.

"The thing we're excited about is a game coming a little bit quicker," Schueller said.

"One of our challenges we've felt is that we've been practicing a lot but not being able to battle against opposition regularly enough.

"This will be the quickest turnaround that we've had this season so we're looking forward to that. We've had a good look again at Melbourne this week and now have got ourselves ready to go in front of our home crowd which we can't wait to get back in front of."

For just the second time this season the Bullets will have as less as five days in between games having played just seven matches over the opening seven rounds of the season.

That has Brisbane having played the fewest numbers of games so far in NBL25 and while it has had its positives to continue to work on things in practice, and to keep the bodies as fresh as possible, it's also had its challenges to build momentum from game to game.

After starting the season at HoopsFest in Perth against the New Zealand Breakers, the Bullets had six days before playing the Illawarra Hawks in Wollongong.

There was then eight days leading into the first home game at Brisbane Entertainment Centre against the Sydney Kings before another full seven days ahead of the first win of the season against the South East Melbourne Phoenix in Melbourne.

Following that was the only other five-day break for the Bullets and it led to a win at home against the Breakers before nine days in between hosting the JackJumpers.

There was then another full week from that to heading up to Cairns for the win last Saturday night which means the Bullets have now won three of the past four matches ahead of a five-day break in between playing United at Brisbane Entertainment Centre this Thursday.

The Bullets will be attempting to make it four wins in the past five matches as they host a United team sitting on a 7-4 record on the season but fresh off a 34-point home defeat on Monday night at the hands of New Zealand.

Schueller took on the role as head coach with the Bullets ahead of NBL24 on the back of his time as an assistant with Melbourne, but the three games against United didn’t quite go to plan.

United won the three games by an average of 21 points with Melbourne on two occasions taking out the frustrations on losing coming into taking on Brisbane.

It's a similar scenario again on Thursday night with United fresh off a big loss on Monday night to New Zealand and they are still yet to lose consecutive regular season games since December 2022.

However, this is a different Bullets team in NBL25 and not only have they won three of the past four games, but also have the added motivation of celebrating the 350th NBL game of captain Mitch Norton on Thursday night.

Norton is now in his second season with the Bullets and first as captain having previously played with the Townsville Crocodiles, Illawarra Hawks and then the Perth Wildcats where he became a two-time championship winner.

There would be no better way for the Bullets to honour their captain than winning on Thursday night and scoring a first win over United since at the NBL Cup all the way back in March 2021 with Melbourne having won the last 11 between the two teams.

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Melbourne United

Tip off: 6:30pm (AEST), Thursday 7 November, 2024

Where: Brisbane Entertainment Centre

Tickets: Available Here

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel and Kayo