Schueller happy with Bullets' hard edge building

It was the toughness shown by the Brisbane Bullets for a first win of NBL25 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre that most pleased coach Justin Schueller, and being the league's hardest playing team is what he wants his group to become.

The Bullets were back at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on the back of beating the South East Melbourne Phoenix in Melbourne for their first win of the season, and looking for revenge on the New Zealand Breakers for a loss in Perth at HoopsFest.

Brisbane came out much better on Thursday night to lead 8-3 early, and to remain on top for most of the rest of the evening even though there were some nervous moments when the Breakers hit the front early in the fourth quarter.

However, the Bullets responded by scoring the game's next six points and then from there scored the 11-point victory to make it consecutive wins on the season and a first win at the Entertainment Centre.

Coach Schueller wants his team to earn a reputation for their toughness, hardness and competitiveness, and he saw plenty of that in the Thursday night victory.

"We want to be a grind it out group and we might not be the most talented group in people's eyes, but we are going to be the one that's together and trying to play the hardest," Schueller said.

"We're building in that way and in a game where we gave up too many offensive rebounds, Keandre (Cook) was able to come and swoop in, and get some big rebounds for us as an example of that.

"I can talk about a number of guys, I thought even in small minutes Tohi (Smith-Milner) and Bear (Jarred Bairstow) had an impact, and Whitey (Isaac White) as well, and we need everyone contributing to their role."

In the first game of the season in Perth against the Breakers, the Bullets had dug themselves a huge hole to be down 26 points during the game and then still to be trailing by 23 points in the fourth quarter before almost snatching the game late.

It was a similar story in the first home game against the Sydney Kings where Brisbane did fall down by as much as 29 before scoring the game's last 16 points, but Thursday night was a different story.

It was a game the Bullets were on top of most of the way, but then gave up a 14-5 start to the fourth quarter to lose the lead briefly, but Schueller was delighted with the response.

"What I love about our growth right now is that we don't get caught up on a moment, we just move on to what's next," he said.

"That was the biggest change we saw last week and we've continued to build on that this week. We know this league tough and there's no easy games so there's going to be momentum from both teams at different times.

"How you respond to that is important so I loved the response from our group in that fourth quarter and even though we didn’t immediately execute great out of the timeout, nobody dropped their heads and then we got a stop, and moved on.

"That was the response we got and went on with it from there."

Following the win on Thursday night, the Bullets don't play again until remaining at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Saturday against the Tasmania JackJumpers.

It continues a run where for the first eight rounds of the season the Bullets have single games, but Schueller wants to take advantage by continuing to get the group fully humming and also more familiar with the Entertainment Centre.

"We definitely want to freshen some bodies up straight after the game, but for us we know we're on a journey and are nowhere near the finished product," Schueller said.

"We go back to work and keep doing our work, and we're going to get in a few more practices in here at BEC which is great.

"The crowd was awesome again and that's going to be an advantage for us going into this next game, but we know we've got a somewhat slower schedule going into the FIBA window playing the least amount of games.

"But that's a positive for us to get the work done on the practice court to continue to get better, and to grow."