Basketball On The Internet.

THE Tasmania JackJumpers jumped the gun and reloaded their road loss to the Bullets with a key home win before Bryce Cotton remembered who he is and dragged Perth to a home win over Adelaide in which you might have sworn both coaches were trying to lose. 

In the end, one of the two sideline masterminds did enough right to offset the other's blunders and it was the Wildcats escaping with the W.

AS expected, the battle in Tasmania was a gem, the JackJumpers throwing a number of different defensive looks at Bullets star Nathan Sobey right from tip-off, with Anthony Drmic, Jordon Crawford, Jack McVeigh, Sean MacDonald among the many to spend time curtailing and distracting him.

It was a good strategy, Sobey with five turnovers and no-where near as effective as he was a week earlier when he hit 28 points in Brisbane's win over Tassie.

Jack McVeigh was stroking his threeball early as the Jackies sped away before players as diverse as Tyrell Harrison, Mitch Norton and Josh Bannan brought Brisbane back.

Leading 45-36 just ahead of halftime, the Bullets gave up two to a driving McVeigh, then a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer from Milton Doyle.

He enjoyed that and started the third with two more, asserting himself as the game's most dominant player. Plus the defence of former JJ's teammates Sam McDaniel and Isaac White never was going to unduly worry him.

Big triples by Clint Steindl ensured Brisbane had to keep chasing, the last two minutes ghastly by both teams, with turnovers and bad shot selection ensuring it unnecessarily went to the wire. 

TASMANIA JACKJUMPERS 87 (Doyle 24, McVeigh 13, Crawford 11; Lee 7 rebs; Crawford 8 assts) d BRISBANE BULLETS 85 (Harrison 20, Sobey 18, Smith, Norton 10; Harrison, Bannan 8 rebs; Norton, Bannan 3 assts) at the Silverdome, Launceston. Crowd: 3,255

MOMENTUM swung to both teams in the tragic "Jest in the West" where the return to form of Wildcats' champion Bryce Cotton had everything to do with the outcome.

And it wasn't as if Cotton started on fire either, missing from long range, mid range, missing layups ... generally missing. But once his eye was in, he was en route to a season-high 29 points at 50 per cent and there wasn't a thing Adelaide could do about it.

Well, there was, actually, but it decided as a collective to again ignore the potent target Isaac Humphries presents in the block against smallish teams and paid the price for falling in love with the threeball.

Of their 63 field goals, 33 of them were 3-point attemps. They connected on 12. In a game with wild momentum swings, the 36ers scurried back into the contest before the love affair began, and the Wildcats took full advantage.

Relegated to the bench, Jordan Usher (17 points) had his best game since that extraordinary debut, Alex Sarr again was effective and veteran Jesse Wagstaff provided steadiness when John Rillie's wild bunch threatened to go off the rails.

Trey Kell carried the 36ers, Dejan Vasiljevic at one point running the point as the mysteries deepened. But Kell busted his hump all night, a baseline save and flick back to Alex Starling for a sweet basket one of the night's quality plays from Adelaide.

Another winnable game lost, even Tohi Smith-Milner's 3-point swishes wasted. But hey, 11 players got in so their mums and dads will be happy.  

PERTH WILDCATS 99 (Cotton 29, Usher 17, Pinder 12, Sarr 10; Doolittle 8 rebs; Cotton 4 assts) d ADELAIDE 36ERS 88 (Kell 25, Vasiljevic 14, Cadee, Smith-Milner 11, Humphries 10; Starling 6 rebs; Kell 6 assts) at RAC Arena. Crowd: 11,326