WORCESTER Wolves head coach Paul James hailed his side’s defensive work as the platform for their third British Basketball League victory of the campaign.

Wolves are now second in the table after yesterday's hard-fought 87-72 away victory against Manchester Giants.

Wolves were forced to play without Javier Mugica, who hurt a hip in training, but James is confident the forward will be back for Friday’s test against Glasgow Rocks at the University of Worcester Arena (7.30pm).

James said: “Any win on the road is a really good one. Manchester is a tough place to get a win. The crowd are very close to the action and they can knock you out of your rhythm.

“I thought we did a great job in silencing the crowd to a degree and we built a big enough lead to come away with an excellent victory.

“We had a run of seven consecutive stops in the match. Good defence creates easy offence.

"We sat down on our defence and got seven consecutive stops when Manchester didn’t score and then we went down the other end and scored. I was delighted."

Pavol Losonsky and Perris Blackwell topped the scoring charts for Wolves with 19 points each, with Jay Couisnard firing 16 points. Disraeli Lufadeju and Ashton Khan contributed 13 and 12 points respectively.

James said: “We hadn't got away from a team until we played Manchester and that was a sign of progression.

"I was pleased by the way we shared the ball as a unit – we had five guys in double figures and they needed to step up because we were short-handed and that will put us in good stead.”

James admitted Wolves' heavy defeat at Leicester Riders in their previous outing "had hurt" the squad.

"We played better than we had in any game to date," said James.

“We had a long lay-off after the loss against Leicester, a defeat which hurt us, but we got back on the training court, raised our levels of intensity and our concentration was more focused."

He added: “I was disappointed with the first few minutes – it was bit of a slow start – we had some great goal-scoring opportunities and we didn’t take them. But I called a time-out and we had a few choice words and the guys responded."