NBL Quarter Final

Brisbane v New Zealand

The Bullets open up their finals campaign at home against the Breakers, who stunned Cairns in front of their home crowd 2 days ago.  A semi final spot in a series against Melbourne next week is on the line here.  Both home teams won the 2 regular season meetings, the Breakers by 1 point in round 7 and the Bullets by 32 points in round 13.

Apart from the continued absence of Captain Sam Mackinnon (knee), the Bullets are at full strength.  As has been the story all year long for the Bullets, import Ebi Ere has carried them.  He is more than capable of doing so against the Breakers defence once more.  CJ Bruton and Adam Gibson are more than capable at getting the ball to Ere in the right places and any other contributions that these two and import Dusty Rychart can make will result in the Breakers task being that much more difficult.  Defensively, Dillon Boucher, Rychart, Craig Bradshaw and Justin Brown will have to keep the likes of Tony Ronaldson and import Derrick Alston quiet.  Adam Gibson and Mick Hill will most likely share the unenviable task of tagging Kirk Penney.

Against the Taipans, Penney got plenty of support on the offensive end.  It will be needed here once again.  I suspect that big men Ronaldson (assuming that his leg continues to hold up okay) and Alston will be most capable of providing it here.  On the defensive end, keeping both Bruton and Ere quiet will be an extremely difficult task, one that I believe may be beyond them.  I would expect import Orien Greene to play some of his minutes at the shooting guard or small forward position and Paul Henare to get more minutes off the bench at point guard in an attempt to minimize the impact of the Bullets’ two leading scorers.

I expect the Bullets to get a comfortable victory here and this seems to be accurately reflected in the line betting.  The total looks too high to me here.  I believe the Bullets will be able to slow down the rate at which the Breakers will tally their points however I am not so confident in the Breakers slowing down the offence of the Bullets which is why I will not be backing the unders.