Three-point marksman Steve Lepore is ready to come out firing again as Brighton Bears go for a hat-trick of major prizes.

The BBL Cup winners can take a huge stride towards their second piece of silverware and also give their league title hopes a boost on a hectic weekend.

A reinforced London Towers line-up provide the opposition in tomorrow's BBL Trophy semi at Newcastle (5pm), followed by a tricky league tussle at Milton Keynes Lions on Sunday (4pm).

Towers appear to have fitted a revolving door to their Crystal Palace base since Bears beat them in mid-November and the latest signing could be a good one in former Newcastle and Scottish Rocks forward Niki Arinze.

Back-up man Kojo Mensah-Bonsu has also joined since then while James Hamilton, Louis Truscott and Steve Ogunjimi have left.

American duo Dennis Mims and Sean Jackson, signed in December, did not even get a chance to face Brighton before being axed.

Bears coach and owner Nick Nurse admits that a win tomorrow would be a massive result on and off the court for his club, given the final takes place at the Brighton Centre.

He is promising his men a tougher test than that offered by Rocks in the cup final, and that is where Lepore's all-round game comes in.

The 24-year-old from Ohio drew his first blank from three-point range in 14 games as the Rocks were vanquished, putting up just two attempts from outside the arc, his fewest of the season.

At the same time, he put his 6ft 5in to good use to lead his team in rebounding with eight.

Three steals and two assists against no turnovers completed a valuable afternoon's work.

Lepore played a variety of roles at college and is the only recognised three-point shooter in the BBL who combines 40 per cent long-range shooting with double-digit scoring and five rebounds or more per game.

In other words, he does not need to be blazing away from distance to be effective.

Lepore said: "On Sunday, we were having so much success getting the ball in to our big men inside that we just kept doing that and hurting them in that way.

"As for the rebounding, you can always look back and think you could have done better but I'm pretty pleased with how it's going.

"I don't think I rebounded as hard or as well as I could have to start with and the coach said a few things to us as a team.

"He felt we were capable of better, of more desire and better positioning.

"Rebounding doesn't always come down to jumping higher or being taller. He made us aware there was room for improvement."

Bears lead the league in defensive rebounding but Towers miss fewer two-point shots than any other team, setting up an intriguing tussle.

Towers, though, have struggled from the three-point line, which is where the likes of Lepore and Yorick Williams could come in.

Williams is still the top three-point marksman in the league but Lepore stands seventh in those rankings with a 40 per cent success rate.

He had a horrendous run of three games early on when he missed all 11 three-point attempts but, since then, has been among the very best in the land, making 29 of 57 attempts in the league, a strike rate of 51 per cent.

He is also Bears' top Trophy marksman with 62 in three games, built largely on a 32-point haul against Plymouth.

Lepore's story of how he got his chance after impressing for the touring USA Select is now well known in the States after a basketball magazine caught up with him.

So is his comment in the same interview that English basketball fans are enthusiastic but not too knowledgeable.

Bears followers picked up on that when they saw the interview on a website but Lepore is happy to clarify what he meant. He said: "The question was about how it compares to being in America and there is no doubt that here football is No.1.

"The people who come to our games know about basketball but I'm talking about the general public.

"We go out to coach at schools and some of the kids have never seen the game before."