Bullets rewarded for staying resilient

Given the Brisbane Bullets' injury situation, they couldn’t go in and have a shootout with the Adelaide 36ers. Instead they wanted to focus on limiting the risks, being strong defensively and what resulted was a win to savour.

There was everything working against the Bullets. They had lost five of their last six games, they arrived in Adelaide still missing Tyrell Harrison, Josh Bannan, Deng Adel, Emmett Naar and Rocco Zikarsky, and were against an in-form home team in front of a sold out crowd.

It was a Sixers opponent that can be intimidating too if you let them whether that's Montrezl Harrell being a force inside, Kendric Davis using his speed and craftiness or DJ Vasiljevic catching fire shooting.

The Bullets knew they couldn’t try and just match talent for talent, instead they wanted to play the game on their terms, make sure they took care of the ball and created the right looks - and were rock solid defensively.

By the end, they had done all that successfully and scored a stirring 92-89 victory where the sum of the team outplayed a team with some outstanding individual talent.

All the areas the Bullets wanted to be better at than the 36ers they were, including 17 points from turnovers to 11, 14 second chance points to nine, 15 fast break points to five and even shooting better from the field and behind the arc.

Combine that with the players who all stepped up offensively with Casey Prather (26 points), Keandre Cook (17), Tohi Smith-Milner (14), Isaac White (13), Mitch Norton (10) and Josh Adams (10) all scoring in double-figures, and there was plenty for Schueller to be proud of.

"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 tonight."

At no point all season has Schueller made excuses whether it was losing Sam McDaniel, Jarred Bairstow and James Batemon to season-ending injuries or now having lost Harrison, Adel, Zikarsky and Bannan for the rest of the regular season.

Instead he has continued to back in that if the players available continue to play their role and do all the right things, that they can still be competitive.

That faith was fully rewarded on Friday night in Adelaide.

"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."

The performance of captain Norton to hound 36ers superstar Davis all evening was as crucial as anything in the win.

He was instrumental in Davis going 7/22 from the field, 1/8 from deep and in having four turnovers. Even though he had 24 points and 10 assists, his frustration at Norton's defence meant that he was far from his effective best.

"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."