Tough news for Drmic, encouraging for Woodhill

Tasmania JackJumpers coach Scott Roth confirmed a setback for Anthony Drmic with his back injury but emerging big man Archie Woodhill is closing in on a return while he was high on the efforts on Saturday night from Ben Ayre, Nick Marshall and Josh Bannan.

It might have been a fourth straight loss for the JackJumpers on Saturday night against the Brisbane Bullets as they returned to MyState Bank Arena but it wasn’t without positives.

After falling 14 points down in the third quarter, they did fire back and even hit the front late in the fourth quarter, and had a chance on the last possession to either draw level to force overtime or to hit the walk off game winner.

It wasn’t to be with the two-point defeat but several players had impressive performances including Josh Bannan battling hard against his old team even with giving up size on Tyrell Harrison.

Ben Ayre also went 4/6 from three-point territory for 14 points while Nick Marshall also had 18 points, nine rebounds and three assists points while taking on the big defensive jobs including trying to slow the influence of Brisbane superstar Casey Prather late in the piece.

The JackJumpers were missing 270-game versatile veteran Drmic for a sixth straight game and his absence could well extend now for the rest of the season with Roth confirming after the match that he has suffered a further setback with his back injury.

"So he had a setback, I don't know when it was now, but I think two or three days ago and he'll probably be out indefinitely," Roth said.

"It will probably be quite a while if we see him at all again this year."

There is more encouraging news on the personnel front for the JackJumpers with back up emerging big man Archie Woodhill a chance to return on Thursday.

He suited up to play against the Bullets and now could well hit the floor for the first time this season against the Adelaide 36ers to provide some much-needed back up to Bannan, Will Magnay and Majok Deng in the front court.

"He was not able to play tonight, but we were down guys for shootaround and just our layup line, and our pre-warmups so it was good to get him out and running about," he said.

"We're hopeful for him on Thursday that he'll be back."

While Tasmania did lose a fourth straight match against Brisbane to slip to a 5-7 record, Roth was full of praise for the efforts of both Ayre and Marshall.

"Those two guys were fantastic and I love Benny to death, he just brings great energy and great swagger to the game, and plays with a lot of passion," Roth said.

"He had another corner there that he'll take a thousand times over and I just loved his effort and energy that brought us back into the game.

"Then I can't say enough about Marshall who's guarding just about everybody on the floor and then we put him on Prather at the end of the game.

"He's just growing leaps and bounds within our group and he's got obviously a very bright future with us, and he was outstanding."

Saturday's game also provided the second chance of the season for Josh Bannan to play against his former team and he did continue his career-best form for the JackJumpers with another 18 points, 11 rebounds, two assists and two steals.

He had his troubles with former teammate Tyrell Harrison at the times he was matched up with him just because of the size he was giving up, but overall he's putting up 14.3 points and 9.3 rebounds with Roth delighted with what he's providing.

"I thought he played really well and it's unfortunate just the size of that match up for him, and having Magnay out there as a bigger body to put him against Harrison is what we went with," Roth said.

"Then we got back in the game with that smaller group and I just let them ride it out with Marshall at the four being really effective.

"But Josh has been solid across the board and had another very good game across the board, and he's been good for us obviously."

Once again Roth was happy enough overall in the defensive performance to hold the Bullets to 83 points and over the course of the season, they are only conceding 85.5 a game, but it's at the offensive end he knows the improvement has to come.

The JackJumpers are only averaging scoring 83.3 points themselves with the third lowest offensive rating across the league. Roth wants to see them find more consistency scoring to take advantage of the chances to win their defence is giving them.

"Ultimately again we held them to the late 80s and we can't score so to win games here consistently enough, we're going to have to score the ball much better," Roth said.

"We're a little bit Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, just two nights ago we finally put 100 on the board and now we grind away to try and get to 81.

"We're still keeping most teams in range for us of what we are capable of doing defensively, but we're just not manufacturing enough points."