I THINK the addition of Paul Guede to the Worcester Wolves ranks has taken us to another level.

He gives us an extra scoring option and defensively we are much stronger than we have been all season.

Paul had a fantastic game against British League leaders Newcastle Eagles, scoring 18 points and pulling down nine rebounds.

With him in the starting line-up, Worcester have improved defensively and have started games much better than we have done in recent times.

I like his contribution and all the other guys are playing their part as well which makes a big difference to the Wolves.

We have also brought in Dejan Radojevic and once we get him up to speed with what we’re doing I think he’s another who will have an impact. We are really excited about having him in the team.

I can’t say I was surprised that we beat Newcastle because I think we have a good team with some solid players in the line-up.

We all knew it was a massive game in terms of us still having an opportunity to win the league and staying in the hunt.

The key thing was to match their intensity and not back down because I feel a lot of teams back down from Newcastle but our players wouldn’t do that against anybody.

Now we face Bristol Flyers on Saturday before beginning the defence of our British Basketball League Trophy at Durham Wildcats on Sunday.

It will be the first time I have defended a title at Worcester but once you’ve won something you want to go back and do it again.

It’s always difficult the second time around but I think we have got a good opportunity to start the tournament off well.

The players will know that it’s a one-off game and that there are no tomorrows — you either get the job done and you’re in it or you lose and you’re out.

We don’t want to be out of another competition at this point in time.

We lost to Bristol in the BBL Cup quarter-final in October and it was disappointing to go out so early.

I think there was an opportunity to get through by beating Bristol and then Glasgow Rocks to reach the final. That was a missed opportunity for us.

Bristol probably had their game of the season in defeating us but we didn’t start off with right mindset so we hurt ourselves.

We haven’t played Durham yet, which is a bit strange because we are more than a third of the way through the season.

But we set the bar very high against Newcastle and if we can get anywhere near that level on Sunday I would like to think we’d be able to win that game.