Basketball: Lions blood O'Connell

Leicester Riders and Birmingham Bullets supporters have little to pin their hopes on this season, other than their clubs climbing out of the bottom two places of the BBL Championship to earn a consolation place in the end-of-season play-off quarter-finals.

But eighth-placed Milton Keynes Lions can stamp emphatically on those aspirations this weekend while reinforcing their own grip on a play-off slot: they visit the Riders tonight and Bullets tomorrow, already two victories ahead of Leicester and three ahead of Birmingham, who have yet to win.

All three clubs unveil debutants, the former Harlem Globetrotter Trey Moore for the Bullets, the former University of North Carolina playmaker Jonathan Holmes for Riders and the Irish international John O'Connell for the Lions.

O'Connell could make the biggest impact. The 6ft 5in forward played for Bullets two years ago, then last season had an unproductive campaign with London Towers. O'Connell will happily throw himself over the advertising boards just to keep a ball in play and is the sort of scrapper the Lions need.