Strong Oliver, Machado showings not enough against Bullets

They started strongly and Cam Oliver and Scott Machado did what they could, but the Brisbane Bullets were on fire at the NBL Cup on Sunday led by Nathan Sobey as they defeated the CQUniversity Cairns Taipans 115-95.

The Taipans and Bullets were playing their first ever Queensland derby in Melbourne on Sunday as part of the NBL Cup and with the Snakes determined to respond to a tough Friday night loss to the Perth Wildcats, they started impressively.

With Kouat Noi, Fabijan Krslovic and Scott Machado starting strongly, and then Nate Jawai coming on for his best patch of production of the season so far, the Snakes were looking good and secured a point for winning the opening period thanks to triples from Jordan Ngatai and Jarrod Kenny.

But Nathan Sobey then took over the game in the second quarter for Brisbane to score 18 first half points on his way to 30 for the game to help the Bullets to a 60-51 half-time advantage.

Cairns' offence was going OK. Machado had 13 points and five assists to the half and the team was shooting 18/35 from the field and 6/10 from long range. But giving up 60 points was never going to be a recipe success especially when being outrebounded by 11 and giving up 11 second chance points.

Cam Oliver did his best to try and will Cairns back into the contest in the second half starting with a massive throwdown slam on the alley-oop from Machado.

He was knocking down his shots from downtown and finishing strongly at the rim, but the Taipans just couldn’t work their way close enough to strike even after Vic Law was ejected after receiving a second tech foul for Brisbane.

The Bullets went on to win by 20 to leave the Taipans having now lost their past three matches at the NBL Cup after such an impressive opening to the tournament within a season against the Illawarra Hawks.

The Snakes ended up losing the rebound count by 17 on the night but still shot the ball reasonably going 47 per cent from the floor and 41 per cent from at 10/24. But the offence wasn’t the issue and 95 will win more games than not in the NBL. Conceding 115 won't.

Scott Machado had another strong game for Cairns with 26 points and six assists while Cam Oliver warmed into the contest for 21 points and six rebounds on 8/11 shooting from the floor and a perfect 3/3 from beyond the arc.

Kouat Noi added 11 points and three rebounds with Nate Jawai finishing with nine points and five boards, Jordan Ngatai seven points, Mirko Djeric six points, three boards and three assists, Mojave King five points and three rebounds, Fabijan Krslovic five points, Jarrod Kenny three points, two rebounds and two assists, and George Blagojevic two points and a steal.

Taipans coach Mike Kelly rightfully wasn’t happy with the defensive performance but won't stop trying to continue to fix it.

"We're not getting the improvement we want on defence. Anytime you give up 60 in the first half and 115 over four quarters there's a problem," Kelly said.

"What we are trying to do is a lot of things but the guys are aware that it's an issue. We've trained through it, we've watched video and we've talked about it. We have tried to get line-ups in that will defend the way we want to defend, but we didn’t get it done tonight."

Jawai got more involved offensively in the first half to show he can still be a force but he's just focusing on continuing to get better defensively to ensure he earns those extra minutes moving forward.

"Obviously I'm disappointed about the loss but I'm always comfortable playing against Brisbane with two of their seven-footers," Jawai said.

"I love that match up with Hodgy so it's comfortable for me going into the game, but I dropped off towards the second half and I think we are disappointed with our defence as a team. That kind of affected us going the other way so I didn’t really buy into how I played in the first half. 

"I'm more thinking of the team effort and that's what I was worried about. I was just fortunate enough to get the ball in the first half. Obviously this is a new system we are running and I'm still getting used to it, and be more consistent on the defensive end. 

"Defence is a big thing that I need to work on and I can see myself more on the court the more I improve so that's where I need to improve moving forward and I need to be much better on it."

The Taipans look ahead to taking on the Sydney Kings on Friday and Adelaide 36ers on Sunday as the NBL Cup continues in Melbourne.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 7
NBL CUP WEEK 2

CQUNIVERSITY CAIRNS TAIPANS 95 (Machado 26, Oliver 21, Noi 11) 

BRISBANE BULLETS 115 (Sobey 30, Drmic 20, Froling 17)

POINTS AWARDED – Brisbane Bullets 6, Cairns Taipans 1

BOX SCORE