Basketball: Nurse seeks relief from strife

It has been an up and down week for Brighton Bears' Nick Nurse. Named the BBL's coach of the month for January and announced as a bankrupt in the London Gazette, this weekend the American turns his attention to cutting the lead of Chester Jets at the top of the Championship. The Bears, eight points behind Chester but with three games in hand, are at home to Milton Keynes Lions tonight and visit Pymouth Raiders tomorrow.

It has been an up and down week for Brighton Bears' Nick Nurse. Named the BBL's coach of the month for January and announced as a bankrupt in the London Gazette, this weekend the American turns his attention to cutting the lead of Chester Jets at the top of the Championship. The Bears, eight points behind Chester but with three games in hand, are at home to Milton Keynes Lions tonight and visit Pymouth Raiders tomorrow.

Nurse is staying focused, particularly after Chester's win at Bears last weekend in which Brighton lost the England international Yorick Williams to an ankle injury, while the American Cheyne Gadson flew in only that morning as replacement for Ryan Huntley, who has a broken foot. Despite the games in hand, Nurse said: "The big concern is that they are 2-0 up in the head-to-head against us."

The BBL chairman Vince Macauley-Razaq, meanwhile, was cooling the worries of fans about the future of the Bears. Macauley-Razaq said: "This hasn't just happened this week, it is the residue of the problems of the previous management group [of which Nurse was a director] which went into receivership last October.

"Nick put a lot on the line personally when he took over the club, but he is not a director of the current management group with whom we are working to maintain basketball in Brighton."