Nick Nurse last night hailed the hard training ground work which has helped his Brighton Bears to their astonishing winning run.

Bears made it 11 victories on the bounce with a hard-fought 105-96 success at Milton Keynes Lions, having led by 19 at one stage in the third quarter.

Victory came less than 24 hours after the taming of Chester and Nurse admitted: "This was a weekend where you can easily see us dropping a game or two.

"You could never say we would win 11 straight, winning one is hard enough, but it's fun. Every game is really important but the good thing about these guys is the tension never drops."

Bears produced some great offensive work before running out of steam at the end of two tough days, with Rico Alderson and Ralph Blalock again catching the eye while Wilbur Johnson relished his battle of the big men against Jason Siemon.

Lions led by seven early on and were still on terms until Bears went into overdrive with a 14-0 second quarter run.

Alderson and Randy Duck completed that with three pointers, the second on the 24th second buzzer from an Errol Seaman assist.

Mike Brown also beat the shot clock from long range as Bears scored 17 of the last 19 points in the first half.

When the lead was stretched to 68-49 midway through the third the contest looked over but two quick foul calls against Duck took him to four and left him on the bench for nine minutes as Lions staged a comeback. They got back to 77-70 at the final interval but Johnson steadied Bears with seven quick points early in the fourth.

Three pointers from Mike New and Joel Burns gave Lions hope at just five down with 95 seconds to play but New then fouled out.

Siemon followed him when trying in vain to thwart a Johnson dunk. The Bears man duly completed the three point play and the visitors saw it out from the foul line.