Bullets happy to "win ugly"

Over the first half of the season the Brisbane Bullets have started to form a reputation as a team that offers their opposition a route back into games in the fourth quarter. Judging from their two Round 9 wins though, that could be about to change.

The Bullets opened their weekend with a win over local rivals Cairns, which broke the nine-game winning streak the Taipans held over their state rivals heading in. Then, on Sunday, Brisbane steeled itself in the final term to emerge with a one-point win over Illawarra.

The Hawks led by as much as four points with less than five minutes to go, but Brisbane managed to turn the game around to lead by three in the final minutes. A Gary Clark bucket with 30 seconds remaining kept final moments tense, but the Bullets navigated their way to a much-needed victory.

“I’ll take wins any day of the week,” head coach Justin Schueller said following the victory. “Obviously we would like to continue to put our foot down and keep being able to push scoring margins out but we know that’s coming as well.

“We know when we play our best basketball, we can beat everyone in this league. We just need to make sure that’s the habit and consistency we can generate moving forward.

“Josh Bannan going out late with a delayed concussion threw some things at us we weren’t really preparing for. DJ (Mitchell) comes in, has a great impact in the game. Sobes’ (Nathan Sobey) stat-line is one of his best all year on four shot attempts, so whether it’s perceived talent or not everyone came in and gave us something today which is what we needed.”

The pair of victories have given the Bullets some breathing room in sixth position on the ladder, and they now sit level on wins with Sydney and South East Melbourne, while leading the seventh-placed Taipans by two games.

Former Hawk Isaac White scored nine crucial points off the bench in Sunday’s win, and he says this season is all about forming good habits.

“Something Mitch Norton and I talk about a lot is getting into the habit of winning,” White said.

“We’ve dropped a couple of close ones, and you talk about the trajectory and whatever but we’re winning the game and that is building the habit whether it’s ugly or not.

“I like the way we’re going, it’s just about being able to close out the game, because we’ve shown we can put at least three quarters together but we just haven’t been able to finish.

“Now we’ve got two under our belt and hopefully we can take that and just keep moving with it.”

After lighting up the NBL1 North with Mackay in the off-season, White has struggled to replicate the calibre of three-point shooting that has made him such an offensive weapon in recent years.

So far this season, he’s connecting on just 16.7 per cent of his three-point attempts, after he flirted with making half his attempted triples last season.

For the Meteors in the off-season, he connected with 47 threes at almost 40 per cent.

White says while he would like his shot to start falling, he’s finding other ways to impact the game.

“It’s been tough. It’s been something I’ve continued to work on, and I continue to trust my work,” he continued.

“It’s definitely been a challenge mentally more than anything but there’s never been any hesitation from the staff or my teammates. They always encourage me to shoot the ball so my focus is on doing the other parts of the game that can help win.

“[In] the last couple [of games] I’ve been able to get a couple [of threes] to fall and when that picks up, I should be good to go.”

“We only look forward,” Schueller added.

“He’s 75 per cent this weekend and that’s all we care about.”

Brisbane’s next fixture is set for Sunday, December 10 when the Bullets travel to Melbourne United.