Coach Mark Dunning paid tribute to his battling Bears after this stunning comeback 88-85 win against the Manchester Giants.

Brighton trailed by 17 points midway through the third quarter but hit back to snatch the lead with little more than a minute remaining.

A basket from Demetric Reese and two Wilbur Johnson free throws just two seconds from time finished the job, though they had to watch a last gasp hit-and-hope from Julius Joseph bounce off the rim before they could celebrate.

It was Bears' second successive home win, their first success this season at the Brighton Centre and Dunning was happy to enjoy the moment.

He admitted: "It wasn't pretty but I will take winning ugly. Once again we dug ourselves a deep hole but I give maximum credit to the guys for managing to fight back.

"I congratulated them afterwards but I also reminded them of a few things they did wrong while they fresh in the memory. I still think we have got to be better than that."

Both sides were guilty of enough mistakes to exasperate their coaches while the match officials failed to convince that they were totally in command of events. At one stage they ordered Giants to repeat a series of free throws, given for a bizarre call against James Brame and a subsequent technical on Dunning, after being told by the table officials that the wrong players had taken the shots.

Such was the level of farce that announcer Paul Williams dug out his Benny Hill theme tune to offer suitable musical accompaniment. But it was pure theatre by the end as the vast majority of a noisy 1,012 crowd enjoyed Bears' magic moment.

They could hardly have guessed at the drama to come as Bears, having been kept alive by five three-pointers from Demetric Reese, were suddenly on the wrong end of an 11-0 blast to send them into half-time 56-41 adrift.

Giants had gone 66-49 up by the time Dunning called his third quarter time-out.

Then Bears started chipping away at the deficit, helped by one or two inspirational plays.

Dave Wahl brought the house down with a massive offensive rebound and successful shot, then Michael Brown stole the ball and popped in a long two-pointer right on the buzzer to bring it back to 73-66.

The crowd were on the feet in the final period as Bears eventually forced their way into an 82-81 lead with 1min 13secs to go.

Martin Gottfried twice struck for Giants, either side of Kevin Wallace converting after a huge rebound from Errol Seaman for Bears.

Reese made it 86-85 with 15 seconds left and, when Johnson was fouled going for a rebound of Gottfried's missed shot, he picked himself up to sink both from the line.