WITHOUT head coach James Hamilton the Cheshire Jets slumped to their second successive heavy defeat against Worcester Wolves at the Northgate Arena.

Team manager Andy Green took over the duties of head coach after Hamilton was suspended by the club following an incident over the weekend.

In a statement the club said: "The Cheshire Jets have suspended James Hamilton following an incident between two adults at a junior basketball game."

With a resolution to the matter expected early next week Green was given control of the squad for the visit of Paul James' Wolves, who arrived at the Northgate on the back of a 98-48 win over Mersey Tigers.

From the start the Jets seemed to struggle to get to grips with the Wolves. Whether the players were affected by missing their coach or simply need to get to grips with a system they have only been playing as a group for less than three weeks is a matter for debate, but the Wolves were more organised and focused on the task at hand.

Things started so badly in the early stages that before half-time Wolves head coach James was putting on his bench players as his side led by 37 points.

As the Jets fell behind, their experienced players - Chez Marks and Shawn Myers - put more pressure on themselves to dig the team out of a rut.

Their job was not made any easier by the presence of Arnas Kazlauskas. The Wolves big man seems to get away with a lot more than other players and committed three serious fouls before picking up a technical foul and eventually fouling out of the game, but he was able to rob the Jets of momentum at crucial times.

Despite individual players hustling hard the Jets' defence was disjointed at times and their inability to close out the downtown shooters meant the Wolves made 12 of 25 three-point shots.

Ultimately despite a 22 point haul from Marks and a 13 point and 14 rebound double-double contribution from Myers the Jets were unable to cling to the Wolves and went down 98-59.

Afterwards stand-in coach Green said: "It was a very difficult situation. It was a tough call.

"I told the guys we were here to win a game and I needed their help, for them to step up, and we did the best we could.

"I was pleased with their reaction. Some of the guys really did step up tonight, credit to Shawn and Chez, they helped me out with the timeouts and talking to the players. They've got feelings, they want to win games and they did the best they could do.

"On the bench I even had Niel Gillard helping me out with some of the plays because I'm not at all of the training sessions, I wasn't expecting to be thrown into the head coach position!

"But we did what we could do. It was tough coming back from Sheffield on Friday with the big loss we had there. We thought we could have taken the Wolves but unfortunately we couldn't get them.

"We just didn't take care of the outside shooting tonight. Three guys killed us."