This is one busy week here at the Bears and that is just what we needed to get everyone buzzing again after last weekend's events.

The guys were back in training on Monday morning, when the mood was, I would say, a little pensive after the horrible night we suffered in losing to London Towers on Saturday.

They have been hard at it on the practice court and in the weights room, focusing the mind on the task in hand at Sheffield this coming weekend.

We have also had the pleasure of mixing with existing and potential new fans through our Bear Essentials programme and our Ballers night at Henry J. Bean's bar in downtown Brighton.

Such events are very important to us and we hope they proved enjoyable to those of you who took part, including those fans who logged on to brightonbears.com for our live link-up from Henry J. Bean's on Tuesday.

All the players get involved with such schemes and are, without exception, great at mixing with the public, be it schoolkids or more mature fans. They certainly enjoy our various programmes in the local schools and I would strongly advise any teachers who might be interested in getting involved with the Bears to get in touch with us as soon as possible. You will not be disappointed.

I'm afraid the word 'disappointed' goes nowhere near describing how we all felt at Crystal Palace from about 9pm onwards last Saturday. I put the defeat down to lack of concentration and a sizeable dose of complacency.

We had won 11 straight and we kind of went in there thinking "okay we've made it" without playing the game. Trouble is, this league is a bitch. True, we made it look like it wasn't in our first 11 games but it is hard to win basketball games in this league. I've been in this thing too long not to realise that.

I know there was a lot of talk about the referees. Everybody wanted to complain but I thought that we had more calls go for us than Towers did. Seriously.

Things were overcalled a lot at both ends but that's the way it is in this league. It is not why we lost. We just went in a step slow and never recovered.

Did you see how wide open Towers were shooting in the first half? That's not us. Then, when I changed the defence, we still couldn't lock down on our men. We had guys breaking the pattern and the system defensively and there was a complete and utter lack of concentration.

I thought it was a bad night for the Bears and a bad night for basketball. I was certainly disappointed with the ejection of Rico Alderson and we have studied tape of the incident leading up to that decision.

The first flying elbow was thrown at, rather than by, Rico but, as often happens, the refs saw the retaliation. Rico threw a high elbow which did not connect too badly on their guy. In the States I think we would be talking about an Oscar for the way their guy went down.

Rico was hard done by. His reputation seems to go before him. Rico's behaviour has been great since he joined us and sooner or later the refs will realise that.

Towers will not slip up in their final group game, which means the Trophy has gone for us this season, but we have still won 11 out of 12. I will happily take that ratio of wins for the rest of the season but we need your backing home and away for some key games in the coming weeks. See you there.