Preview: NBL26 R5 Away v Perth Wildcats

Before returning home on Friday night, the Brisbane Bullets play their first NBL Ignite Cup by Disney+ game on Wednesday evening when facing the Perth Wildcats at RAC Arena in Lamar Patterson's 100th appearance.

The Bullets will play their fifth game from the first six matches of NBL26 away from home when they take on the Wildcats at RAC Arena on Wednesday night.

It will also be Brisbane's first game as part of the Ignite Cup which will all be played on Wednesday nights throughout the regular season.

Points will be available for winning those games and also for winning each quarter, and then the two teams with the most points from the Wednesday night games will play off in a Championship Game on the Gold Coast in February.

The Ignite Cup games also count as usual regular season NBL games as well with the Bullets looking to improve on their 1-4 record as they come up against the Wildcats on their home floor who are now 3-1.

Brisbane won the first game of the season on the road to the New Zealand Breakers before narrow losses to the Cairns Taipans, Adelaide 36ers and Tasmania JackJumpers.

Those three losses only came by a combined 10 points, but last Saturday night was tougher for the Bullets in Wollongong against the Illawarra Hawks with the defending champions scoring their first win of the season to the tune of 27 points.

The Wildcats, meanwhile, lost their first game of the season at home to the JackJumpers and have since gone on a three-game winning streak with road wins over the Breakers and Taipans, and at home to the Hawks.

The Bullets will again be without injured trio Mitch Norton, Sam McDaniel and Jacob Holt to face the Wildcats but they do have injury replacement pair Lamar Patterson and Cal Dalton who will continue to step in to help fill the void.

The game will also be the 100th for Patterson with the Bullets with his career including twice being named to the All-First NBL Team and coming into this return season for him fresh off being the NBL1 North MVP at the Ipswich Force.

The Wildcats' offence is still finding its feet this season but their defence has been greatly improved with them not giving up more than 84 points in a game, and conceding only an average of 78.5 points.

The Bullets will also need to look out for in-form Perth pair Jo Lual-Acuil Jr (22.8 points, 8.8 rebounds) and Dylan Windler (16.3 points, 10.5 rebounds) while they have a host of other threats including Kristian Doolittle, Mason Jones, Ben Henshall, Elijah Pepper and Lat Mayen.

Bullets coach Stu Lash is confident that his team will be able to shrug off Saturday night's loss to Illawarra and put in a much-improved showing on Wednesday in Perth ahead of then returning home to play host to the undefeated Melbourne on Friday night.

"Over the course of the season you always probably have two or three games that you want to flush away really quick and move on, and this is probably one of them just given where we're at from a scheduling standpoint and bodies," Lash said.

"There are a few key details that we need to improve on and we will address that, but the schedule and the travel isn’t something I'll gripe about.

"It's a privilege to play professional basketball or coach professional basketball, and there's people in this world that are dealing with real challenges and who work really hard jobs.

"So the worst day in the NBL is a pretty good day for a lot of people and I know there's a lot of complaining going around in the league right now, and we talk about having a positive mindset in our organisation.

"We embrace what we have in front of us and we're going to go back to Brisbane, we'll get to work on Monday and get to fly out west, and it's obviously a great challenge to play at Perth.

"We play there Wednesday and then we come home to play United on Friday so if you're a competitor which I know our guys are, you want this."

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Perth Wildcats

Tip off: 8:30pm (AEST), Wednesday 15 October, 2025

Where: RAC Arena, Perth

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel, Disney+, Kayo and Fetch