Coach Mark Dunning slammed Bears' attacking work as "a comedy of errors" as they wasted another chance to shine on the big stage in a 79-84 loss to Derby Storm.

This may not have been a thrashing of the type Bears endured on their previous outing before the Sky Sports cameras last month.

But in its way defeat by Derby Storm was even more disappointing than that 27-point humbling by the Chester Jets.

This was a game Bears were targeting for a rare victory, having won at Derby early in the season and seen Storm lose two key players in recent weeks.

Instead, Dunning's men gave themselves a 16-point mountain to climb as early as the second quarter.

They were back to 43-39 by half-time and, when Wilbur Johnson forced home the opening points of the third quarter, the gap was just two points.

That was as close as they got. A 9-0 run put Storm back in command and, though Bears cut the deficit to six with 90 seconds left, they were unable to take a couple more chances to set up a real cliffhanger for the noisy 1,500 crowd.

Instead, they ended up just trying to delay the inevitable, taking their foul tally to 27 compared to Derby's ten and allowing the visitors to rattle up a misleading winning margin.

Bears fans had seen it all before, and so had Dunning.

He said: "Once again we were chasing the game. It's very difficult to keep coming back from deficits and that's all we ever seem to try and do.

"We still had a chance in the last few minutes but not the way we were playing offensively.

"We were missing a lot of shots. In the first half I thought we didn't do a good job of passing the ball and it just looks like a comedy of errors. Very, very disappointing."

Statistics can be misleading, but they told a pretty accurate story of Bears' attacking efforts.

Brighton shot just 37 percent from the floor, including four successes out of 23 from three-point range.

It might have been different had more openings been worked for Johnson. Bears' inspirational centre was afforded just 12 attempts, of which nine were on target. He was also faultless at the free throw line.

By contrast, Demetric Reese hit just three field goals out of 16, Dave Wahl seven out of 24 and the bench players a combined two out of 15.

Kevin Wallace was more successful at eight out of 14, which is respectable but hardly a matchwinning effort.

Wahl's saving grace was an astonishing effort off the backboards. The shots might not be dropping in for him but there is no doubting his endeavour and he pulled down 24 rebounds, ten of them at Derby's end.

Not that it offered him much consolation. He admitted: "We probably had a chance at the end but we didn't lose the game in the last minute. We lost it in the first half.

"Everyone is still playing hard and sticking together. Our coach still believes in us and we believe in our coach but it's not transferring into wins.

"We beat Derby up there but Bowman didn't play then and they had two different inside guys so it's like playing against a new team.

"We still thought we could play with them but obviously we can't."

Derby guard Barry Bowman was indeed the star of the show. He top scored on 32 points and produced a series of virtuoso plays, culminating in a spectacular dunk to round off the scoring.

By contrast, Bears potential matchwinner Michael Brown watched from the bench still unsure as to when he will will be back from his freak thigh injury.

The sooner the better as far as Brighton are concerned because, barring a dramatic twist to the tale, play-off time looks like being a case of Much Ado About Nothing for Dunning's men.