Well, it was a fantastic night, but I can't help feeling it was also a fantastic opportunity missed.

I felt we should have been celebrating Brighton Bears' first ever ULEB Cup win on Tuesday because, against Split Croatia Insurance, were the better team on the floor.

Sure, I know we were playing a famous club but you don't lose to tradition, you lose to the guys on the floor and we didn't get it done. Instead, we let slip a nine-point lead in the last three minutes and went down by a point in overtime.

There were about seven things that happened down the stretch in regulation time and if any one of those seven had worked out differently we would have won.

I was asked if that result might come back to haunt us. I sure hope it does because that would mean we were in the running for a top three place.

That has to be our target now. The top two in our six-team group go through to the last 16 knockout stage but the four best third-placed teams survive as well.

There are nine games to go and I think the group of us, Split, Cholet and Ionikos are about even, with the Lithuanians and the Poles probably the class of the division. That's my guess.

We know Split will lose some games. Now we've got to carve it up somehow and sneak a win somewhere where we are not supposed to.

I am confident the first of our wins will come in Greece next Tuesday night. Again, it will be a new experience as we go on the road for the first time but I would hope we would build on what we did on Tuesday.

The evidence of that game suggests a lot of our guys can score key baskets for us, which is good.

Other than Kendrick Warren and Randy Duck, a lot of the guys were scoring off the flow of our offence, not just beating a man one-on-one, which is a good sign.

Remember we were not at our healthiest either. Tom Frederick got a bad injury, Randy did not practise for a few days because of the flu and Andy Gardiner had flu.

Looking at the Split side, they made a couple of decisions with their starting five which surprised me but the main problems they caused was when Curtis McCants came on to the floor. We had to adjust our defence to look after him.

Their other point guard, the youngster Ukic, looked clever with the ball and I guess he hit a huge three towards the end of regulation but, if you take McCants and Tommy Smith out of their team, I didn't think they were great.

I certainly did not see the sharpness you would expect to see from a team from that part of Europe. As for their big guy Pasalic, he was in foul trouble from early on and I was amazed their coach kept him in there.

Still, I guess he hit the three which took us to overtime.

So a bad result for our guys, given the way we played, which was much better, but I still enjoyed the evening immensely. It was a lot more fun basketball than the British League.

I thought it was such a better level because each possession was so important. From the 25-minute mark to 45 minutes every possession was critical and that's fun basketball.

It was a hell of a night for our organisation both on and off the court. Feedback seems to have been positive and rightly so. Now let's move on from that, both at home and abroad.