Bulls see room for improvement even in victory over Cavs

Following a hard-fought loss to Indiana on Tuesday, Tom Thibodeau's Chicago Bulls picked up a timely divisional victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday evening at Quicken Loans Arena.

Along with holding the Cavs to just 11 first-quarter points and having all five starters reach double figures in the scoring column, Thibodeau's squad picked up a season-high 23 points from guard Marco Belinelli. Though he was pleased with his players' performance overall, the third-year coach still believes that his team needs to work on closing out the second half stronger.

"The part of the game that I thought we probably could have done a lot better in was the end of the second quarter," Thibodeau told Sam Aggrey of CSNChicago.com. "We had a really good rhythm going, I thought we had a good pace going, I thought the defense was very good and we’re still striving to be a 48-minute team. We know that there’s a lot of things we have to improve upon."

The Bulls have yet to to string together a three-game winning streak so far in 2012-13, but have managed to pull out victories in three of their last four contests to rise back above .500 overall. Thibodeau's team continues to suffer from the absence of star point guard Derrick Rose on the court, even though performances like Wednesday could be a sign of things to come.