Team first mentality has Schueller proud

Nothing highlighted the spirit, passion and camaraderie of Brisbane Bullets more than how they pulled together for Friday's win in Adelaide with coach Justin Schueller rightfully beaming with pride afterwards.

Everything was pointing towards the Bullets having the odds stacked against them when they arrived at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Friday night with the 36ers at home for the last time this regular season and in some imposing form.

Throw in the fact that the Bullets were missing Tyrell Harrison, Josh Bannan, Rocco Zikarsky, Deng Adel and Emmett Naar with Jarred Bairstow, Sam McDaniel and James Batemon having their seasons ended earlier, and it was going to take something special.

That's exactly what the Bullets produced in a performance that showed the true spirit within the group as they played a strongly disciplined and focused 40 minutes of basketball to score their 13th win of the season.

The Bullets finished with 14 second chance points, 17 points off Adelaide's turnovers and 15 fast break points with every player who hit the floor making a contribution.

Schueller was rightfully proud of the entire group for the win afterwards.

"It was more about just trusting who we are, believing in what we do and then understanding that if we are consistent and sustain pressure for long enough, it probably goes our way," Schueller said.

"To have Cal Dalton who wasn’t with us a few weeks back, come in and have some big moments. Tristan Devers as a DP, Kye Savage comes in for a key possession late, and the belief that we've got is that we trust the work that we do, and we believe in our habits every single day.

"Sometimes there's things you can't control but when you can control it, you can force those things to go your way and that's what today is really about.

"It's understanding that if you remove everything we couldn’t control, but the stuff we can we've been doing our job to continue to get better and trusting the process that we have. That’s where this is super satisfying and I can't really think too clearly right now, I'm just incredibly proud."

There were so many standout performances in the win for Brisbane with Casey Prather again top-scoring with 26 points and seven rebounds while Keandre Cook delivered 17 points, six boards, four assists and three steals.

Tohi Smith-Milner chimed in with 14 points and 10 rebounds, Isaac White 13 points and four assists, Josh Adams 10 points, and then captain Mitch Norton 10 points and a brilliant defensive job on Kendric Davis.

There was so much from the whole team performance for Schueller to like.

"I look at the box score and I've got six guys in double-figures, everyone that came in gave us something and I'm just super proud of how resilient this group really is," Schueller said.

"To hold such an offensive power team to 89 with really just one or two bigs, I'm really proud of the group and any time we've actually looked after the ball we've done a really good job this season.

"We were really clear on where our advantages were going to be in this one and that definitely limited some risky play and just making sure we got guys who were hot at the right time, and kept feeding through them. I think we did a good job of that one."

While Schueller is somewhat surprised his captain isn’t talked about more in the Best Defensive Player discussion, Norton's performance on Friday defending Adelaide star Davis was brilliant.

He hounded the 36ers point guard all evening to limit him to 7/22 shooting from the field, 1/8 from downtown and into four turnovers.

"I genuinely feel that if we were still sitting around that top four window like when JB (Batemon) went out that Norto would be getting spoken about as Defensive Player of the Year," Schueller said.

"We've relied on him every single week from Round 1 and maybe people take for granted what he does on that defensive end. We ask for big moments from him week in and week out, and it's easy to take for granted the effort you're going to get because of how consistent he is."

Another player who came up huge for the Bullets was Smith-Milner.

In the absence of Harrison, Bannan and Zikarsky, he had to hold down the fort inside for Brisbane up against Isaac Humphries and Montrezl Harrell, and was superb with 14 points and 10 rebounds while knocking down 4/5 from three-point territory.

"He's someone that I've got a long history and I've had to challenge him time and time again to be the Tohi Smith-Milner that we know he can be," Schueller said.

"That's a guy that was All-Star Five at a FIBA tournament at one point so he's really taken on the extra responsibility in a great way for us.

"The way he shot the ball in this game, he knew he was going to get a fair bit of freedom with the way their coverages are, and he did a great job to keep backing himself."