Two teams, Holcombe and Old Georgians, new to the outdoor National League this season, look most likely to contest a final. Blackheath, who withdrew yesterday, have incurred the wrath of organisers.The regular Coaching Solutions Midlands Invitation Tournament (3 and 4 January, at three venues: Cocks Moors Woods, Birmingham, Wyre Forest Glades, Kidderminster and Perdiswell, Worcester) has an innovation this year with the inclusion of an eight-team women’s event.. With Birmingham University having last weekend qualified from the Midlands to contest the regional play-offs for the men’s national League, interest will turn to the Haslemere Centre, Surrey, tomorrow, where the South event will be played. As last year’s winners of the men’s League, they will represent England. The Higgins Group Leagues get under way over the weekend of 10 and 11 January.Loughborough will be using their excellent facilities to host the European Indoor Trophy from 20 to 22 February. It seems unlikely that they will breeze through the League with a 100 per cent record as they did last season. Watch out for newly promoted Hightown, who have had a long indoor tradition and could wrestle away Slough’s crown under the leadership of Tina Cullen.For the men, Loughborough Students are not so affected, although they will be without the British chief coach, Jason Lee, who was so influential in their success last season.

GB men fly to Johannesburg on 3 January and the women depart for Potchefstroom seven days later.
In the women’s League, the defending champions, Slough, will lose the services of Kate Walsh, Mandy Nicholson, Jane Smith and Fiona Greenham and will find it hard to retain their title and even harder to defend England’s position at the ?te Indoor Cup competition in R?lsheim, Germany in February. Sadly, however, the demands of the National sides, which have had a notable impact on the domestic game, are also going to upset the indoor season Particularly so, as two squads leave for South Africa. Thoughts turn to the short national indoor season, with the Great Britain women’s training squad and the England men and women B squads back in England and the outdoor season in abeyance. Brighton and the Rocks have four games in hand on Sheffield and need to maintain the pressure.

But Swanson describes away games at the Towers and the Bears on successive nights as “the biggest challenge of the season”.Also tonight, the Bears need to avoid losing by more than 12 points at Thames Valley to reach the BBL Trophy semi-finals.. A run of seven straight wins from late October earned Swanson the November coach of the month award – a sequence which crashed to a halt in a 92-53 loss against Brighton in early December.That loss will be on Swanson’s mind tomorrow when he returns to Brighton for the first time since quitting as Nick Nurse’s assistant in the summer. But first, Swanson is focusing on tonight’s trip to Crystal Palace to face the under-achieving London Towers. Steve Swanson has already led Scottish Rocks to a final in his rookie season as a head coach, but the Glasgow-based franchise can legitimately be eyeing more success as the British Basketball League season heads for the new year.
The Rocks meet Sheffield Sharks in the BBL Cup final at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena on Sunday 11 January, and are one of three clubs with only two defeats in the Championship, along with Brighton and Sheffield They are also heading for the semi-finals of the BBL Trophy. Roses: Bow J Local (Caius), R Popham (Clare), C Le Neve Foster (St Catharine’s), O de Groot (Caius), A Shannon (St Edmund’s), J Davies (Trinity), W Pommen (Pembroke), stroke N Kirk (St Edmund’s), cox S Chen Catharine’s) * denotes Blue. Usually, when you have two crews equal on paper, one starts to find chemistry during the week before the trials. There was plenty for us to see, and today was pretty heartening.”Pommen has forgone a chance to represent Canada in next year’s Olympics to lead Cambridge on 28 March.Cambridge trial crews Guns: Bow D Barnes (Emmanuel), C Scott (Trinity Hall), E Sherwood (Jesus), C Grundberg (Magdalene), H Mallinson* (St Catharine’s), K Coventry* (Queens’), K Coveny (Hughes Hall), stroke S Mayer* (Caius), cox K Richardson (Peterhouse).