It really is awayday time right now and, by the time you read this, we will be heading home after our hard fought win against the Scottish Rocks in Glasgow last night.

We were flying home this morning having scrapped plans to travel by bus due to the bad weather up north. We are at Newcastle on Sunday though so we will see plenty of the country this week.

We boarded our flight to Scotland yesterday in great heart after overcoming all kinds of hurdles to win at Milton Keynes and London Towers last weekend.

They were both admirable performances and the one thing that really stood out for me was our defence, particularly at Milton Keynes on Friday, when we conceded just 18 points in the second half.

I thought our guys really responded to what we tried to do. We were thin in numbers and we tried to play cautiously, then turn it up in the second half. We rebounded great, which allowed us to get some fast break baskets, which led to a lot of confidence, which in turn helped us execute better on offence.

To be honest, I was very positive at the half because I felt the way the game was being played was in our favour. I didn't want to be down by ten points, obviously, but I felt everything other than that was going okay. We weren't in foul trouble and I didn't think we had exerted too much energy, we just needed to find some openings.

The following day we took our battered and tired team to London Towers, went 12 points down to a very fired-up home side and still won by 11 points.

I was asked after that whether it had been our best performance in the league so far. My answer? Well, maybe. Again, what a digging down deep effort it was against a talented, well coached team ready to play us. Again, when the chips were down, all of a sudden the defence tightened up.

I was playing man-to-man and zone and box-and-one and back to zone, none of which seemed to be working, but, in the end, we went back to man-to-man and ground it out. We started denying passes, communicating, contesting everything and getting on the end of every rebound. That was textbook again on the defensive end.

I know some of you might qualify your praise of that result in the knowledge that Towers then went to Leicester and lost. Well don't. Anyone who was there on Saturday will have seen that Towers gave it everything against us.

I am sure their defeat the next day had a lot to do with their mental state and their energy levels after playing us. In fact, that is the second time that has happened in the last few weeks. We won there in a hard game at the start of January and, the very next night, Towers lost to a Leopards side who had not won in weeks. We have beaten Towers at home twice now and it has ripped their hearts out each time.

We didn't get a chance to see Jason Medford in action at Towers but I have studied him in practice this week and he looks good. He's big, he has got some agility and he can get to the rim. He's also very coachable and wants to learn and we like that sort of thing. We haven't signed an all-star player but he is a quality guy to bring off the bench.

As for Randy Duck, he is due back here tomorrow. We hope to get him back in training right away and playing later this month. It will be great to see the Duck back and flying again.

GO BEARS!