Schueller praises road warriors

Brisbane’s Finals push faltered in Friday night’s defeat to the Perth Wildcats, but the Bullets rallied on Sunday to emerge from a heated rivalry clash against Cairns with a dominant win. They not only continue to establish themselves as a genuine top six threat, but sent a message to the rest of the competition.

The Bullets defeated their state rivals by 18 points off the back of one of the longest away flights in the NBL. They travelled to Perth, then Cairns for two games in 48 hours, and Hostplus Head Coach Justin Schueller praised his side’s conduct on the grueling road trip.

“What I love is first off no one has complained about how many hours we’ve been on a plane, it’s been ‘how do we respond?’, and ‘what do we need to do to get the job done?’,” Schueller said following the victory over Cairns.

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“That’s where I’m so proud of the group and the growth of who we are right now. We were terrible the other night, there’s no hiding from that, and the only thing we could do was respond the right way.

“From the first tip we had a different edge about us. We went about it, there were no errors on scout, no selfish play, it was playing for each other and if we can do that, we believe we can make some noise moving forward.

“I made a comment that we always leave here with stitches, and it’s true – that’s what the rivalry is like. It’s a great one, it’s real – especially when both teams are competing the way they are.”

Import point guard Shannon Scott once again helped set the defensive tone for the Bullets against his former side, and while the offensive output wasn’t at the level of previous games, he continued to find his niche within Schueller’s system.

Scott has now seen both sides of the Queensland rivalry, after last season’s debut NBL campaign with the Taipans.

He says he’s happy with his time in Brisbane, and praised Schueller’s ability to back his production off the back of his recent hamstring injury.

“I enjoy the team I’m with right now. These are the guys that have my back and coming into the season Justin let me know he was going to have my back no matter what and I really appreciate that,” Scott said.

“I’m going to give my all no matter who we’re playing, it doesn’t have to be Cairns, it can be any of the nine other teams in the league. I’m going to give my all every time.

“Justin did a great job of telling me to be myself. When I first came back I was trying to fit in and ease my way into it, but he let me know to go into it as naturally as I could, be a menace on the defensive end, set up guys, be a playmaker and be myself.

“We’re really happy about the way we finished the game, we had a tendency to take our foot off the gas a little bit and let the lead go down, but I think we did a great job of staying poised, staying solid and finding a way to put the game away.”

Brisbane has ended Round 16 in fourth position and will face ladder-leaders Melbourne this weekend.

The Bullets and United have already met twice this season, and Melbourne cruised to victory on both occasions. Schueller believes the ability to defeat the league's best will be of paramount importance, come Finals time.

“We just want to keep moving forward from this point, and that’s what it’s about for us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who is in front of us, we just want to play the right way.

“For us to be able to achieve what we want to do we have to go and beat United and we haven’t done that yet this year – it’s the only team we haven’t had that ability against. That’s where we start. Can we tick that one off and then we can start looking forward after that?

The Bullets and United play on Friday, January 26 at 6:30pm AEST, live on ESPN via Kayo.