Bullets continue growth with win in Cairns

The growth continued for the Brisbane Bullets in Cairns on Saturday night in a third win in the past four matches with coach Justin Schueller especially happy for Josh Bannan to hit back, and James Batemon and Mitch Norton to lead the charge from the back court.

The Bullets arrived in Cairns on Saturday night for the first Sunshine Stoush of NBL25 looking to bounce back from a loss at home the previous week to the Tasmania JackJumpers, and to shake off a recent tough run against their Queensland rivals.

The Snakes threw the gauntlet right down to the Bullets too by holding a 12-point lead early in the fourth quarter, but the Bullets responded to that by scoring 24 of the game's next 31 points on the way to the eventual 92-88 victory.

That means Brisbane now holds a 3-4 record on the season by the end of Round 7 and having won three of the past four matches with plenty of positives for Schueller to take, while still areas to improve on.

"I believe in this group being able to do the right things for long enough, the challenge we've had is that we still haven’t put 40 minutes together," Schueller said.

"That's our constant challenge, but we know our good is good enough and that there's still too big a gap to our bad.

"That's what we need to keep identifying and getting better on, and the times that we're dribbling the ball too much and not letting it move that's when our offence looks super stagnant.

"But when we share it and let our movements be efficient we know we can put points on the board. Flip it to the defensive end and when we stick to our coverage and home base, we know it's good enough.

"They're the areas of consistent that we want to keep improving on, and there's definitely signs that we're able to do that."

The longer this NBL season goes and the more and more Bullets import guard James Batemon is proving what a prolific scorer and shooter he can be in the NBL.

With captain Mitch Norton running the point and Emmett Naar to come into the squad to back him up, it's allowing Batemon to thrive in a shooting role and he put up another 21 points on Saturday night including 11 quickly in the first quarter on the Taipans when he hit the floor.

He knocked down 3/5 from three-point range as well but it was also his ability to lock in defensively that impressed his coach.

"Right off the bat he had an edge about how he wanted to play at the offensive tonight, but it was at the defensive end for me late," Schueller said.

"He wanted to go onto Rob Edwards who had an outstanding night. He really came out aggressive and was able to give Norto some relief minutes there which is what we need.

"Norto plays 33 minutes and he's defending the best player most of the night there, so to have JB step up in that part really was what was impressive to me."

It was another standout captain's performance for the Bullets from Mitch Norton and his numbers of 12 points and two assists on 4/6 shooting only partly tell the story of the contribution he made.

He played almost 34 minutes for the game, he made life difficult most of that time for Cairns superstar Rob Edwards who did score 27 points but had to earn every one of them on 10/22 shooting.

Norton also made two critical three-pointers in the fourth quarter to start 8-0 and 9-0 runs that firstly got Brisbane back into the game, and then secured the victory.

He will now celebrate his 350th NBL game this Thursday night at home to Melbourne United and Schueller couldn’t be happier to have him as his leader.

"We're very lucky to have him and there's not a person in our organisation that doesn't feel that way," Schueller said.

"We're going to make sure we celebrate that the right way, it's a massive milestone for him. The way we played tonight is exactly what we expect every week and he hits that three in the corner, and that's when you saw the belief in the group just go up a whole other level.

"He plays with his heart on his sleeve, he never takes a shortcut and he's super dependable for us."

After missing the first two games of the season with a hand injury, Josh Bannan has come in to make an immediate impact with the Bullets since in his second NBL season but he hadn’t quite been shooting the ball as well as he would like.

That all changed on Saturday night in Cairns where he went 7/12 from the floor including knocking down a three ball on his way to 16 points, six rebounds and two blocked shots with Schueller happy for him to get the reward for his work.

"Everyone in our group does the work every single day and we see the effort that they put in, and it's just pleasing when they do get the reward," Schueller said.

"He (Bannan) responded the right way after last week when he did cop some shade, but the way that he kept pounding the rock and kept taking care of him to give us a positive impact was really great.

"I just love how his teammates get around him and I've said it before, when he's having a positive game we're pretty good."