Tough night for Bullets against Kings

The Brisbane Bullets were blown away by a highly motivated and well-executing Sydney Kings outfit at home on Saturday night but Dakota Mathias showed encouraging signs with a week now to regroup.

The Bullets were playing their third game at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in the space of a week when hosting the Kings on Saturday night attempting to back up Thursday's 28-point win against the Cairns Taipans.

However, it wasn’t to be with the Kings going on to win 116-79 with the Bullets once again without the experience of Mitch Norton, Sam McDaniel and Tohi Smith-Milner, and big man Jacob Holt.

It was a tough night all-round for the Bullets with just the eight free-throw attempts, six offensive rebounds and 13 turnovers to go with the 47 per cent field goal shooting and going 8/24 from behind the three-point arc.

Dakota Mathias was a definite positive to come out of the game with the newly arrived import shooting 7/11 from the field with 2/4 from long-range for 16 points and four rebounds in his second appearance.

Casey Prather once again top-scored with 24 points on 10/15 field goal shooting with six rebounds and two steals.

Tyrell Harrison added 13 points, seven rebounds, three assists and two blocks, Jaylen Adams 13 points and three assists against his former team, and Alex Ducas five points with five rebounds.

It was a strong bounce back performance from Sydney after losing a heartbreaker to the JackJumpers on Sunday as they finished with 30 assists to four turnovers along with shooting 53 per cent from the field, 41 per cent from downtown and 20/26 at the free-throw line.

Xavier Cooks finished with 24 points and 10 rebounds with Kendric Davis adding 19 points and seven assists, Tim Soares 19 points and six rebounds, and Jaylin Galloway 16 points, four rebounds, three steals, two blocks and two assists.

It wasn’t an ideal start for the home team with the Kings scoring the game's first six points before Casey Prather got Brisbane on the board, and when he hit a three ball soon after it was back to just a three-point game.

Then just as the Bullets had done well to work back into the contest heading towards quarter-time, the Kings fired up with 17 points late in the first quarter to just four and that saw them leading 35-17 by the end of one on 62 per cent shooting without a turnover.

Brisbane opened up the second quarter impressively with the first four points and then Dakota Mathias landed a three-pointer, but again Sydney responded and scored seven straight points to be leading by 19.

The Bullets did show some fight to close out the half, though, including a buzzer-beating three ball from Alex Ducas to cut the Kings lead back to 57-45 with Prather and Tyrell Harrison combining for 27 points for Brisbane.

The Bullets also started the second half in encouraging fashion and had the momentum when Mathias hit a couple of shots, and then Prather knocked down a three ball to make it a six-point ball game.

Kings coach Brian Goorjian called a timeout and it worked a treat for his team who scored the next 12 points, and by three quarter-time had pushed their advantage out to 23.

Things further got away from the Bullets in the final stanza with the Kings putting up 24 points to win by 37 despite a couple of bright spots including a first three-pointer of the season to Cal Dalton.

The Bullets now have wrapped up their run of three consecutive home matches and have a full week until taking on the Tasmania JackJumpers next Saturday at Hobart's MyState Bank Arena.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL SEASON 2025/26

BRISBANE BULLETS 79 (Prather 24, Mathias 16, Harrison 13, Adams 13)

SYDNEY KINGS 116 (Cooks 24, Soares 19, Davis 19)

BOX SCORE