Bullets goes ballistic to eye unlikely play-offs berth
A fourth straight win has given the resurgent Brisbane Bullets a hunger for play-offs in the National Basketball League after they plucked the Illawarra Hawks 110-103.
A Sunday full house of 5000 fans at Brisbane’s Nissan Arena roared their approval for a team which has risen from ninth to fourth at full-time on the back of resilience and expanded threats in their closeknit team.
The Hawks were always playing catch-up or mess-up, except for brief leads early in the second quarter.
No one at the start of this season was predicting gamewinning bursts from guard Mitch Norton or centre Tyrell Harrison but they were stars.
Norton stroked two key three-pointers in the third quarter to build a 10-point buffer (88-78) as features of a calm 18-point game built around 5-8 shooting.
Harrison was superb for 32 minutes.
He made three fine drives to the hoop for buckets in traffic en route to 18 points, worked hard for his seven rebounds, blocked three shots and was the best big man on court.
“It means everything these wins and having the fans out supporting us. From previous years, it shows the change of culture and how hard the team is working,” Harrison said.
SUSTAIN THE RAGE
The Bullets play four of their final six regular season games on the road so they have to sustain the rage to keep their high position for the Play-In Tournament (for teams finishing third to sixth).
At 11-11, the Bullets still have plenty of heat coming from
Tasmania JackJumpers (11-11), Sydney Kings, Cairns Taipans (10-12) and Hawks (9-10), who can all flip the script.
The Bullets are the great find-a-way comeback story of this season.
They’ve won when Aron Baynes was suspended, they’ve won with a Chris Smith threepointer when scoring ace Nathan Sobey was injured and scrapped to stay in tight games with much-improved defence.