Belfast Star coach Sean Ingle says the time has come for his men to turn their quality preparation into victories so they can make the All Ireland Superleague playoffs.

Star face a tough double header this weekend when they travel to Dublin to face Templeogue on Saturday and then 24 hours later entertain Tralee.

After losing to newly crowned National Cup winners Killester 86-78 on Saturday night, Ingle will be hoping they can return to winning ways following back-to-back defeats.

Going in as huge underdogs against Superleague leaders Killester, the Belfast men made an impressive start.

Leading by two points at the end of the first quarter, English professional Max Cooper (18 points and 5 rebounds) came up a big three to give Star a surprise 36-25 lead. But they went almost two minutes without scoring and the home side closed the gap.

Nevertheless, baskets by Cooper and American Darweshi Hunter (21 points) made sure they led 40-34 at half-time.

Then the game completely turned in Killester’s favour as Ciaran Roe, Kason Harrell and Isiah Dasher got on top of Star’s defence.

Killester won the quarter 29-15 and never looked back even though the final quarter was shared 24-24.

Cooper, Hunter and American Deondre Jackson (21 points) all performed well for Star who will feel they let a great opportunity slip away in that crucial third period. As they now look ahead to the doubleheader, coach Ingle is hoping to see even more improvement.

“In terms of what I’m seeing in practice I am very pleased and if we can bring that to the court on a more consistent basis then we will get the wins we need,” said Ingle.

“We’re starting to gel the way I want and we showed our ability in flashes against Killester. We just need to see more of that and if we do then we will turn the losses into victories.

“There’s no doubt the guys are coming to training and working very hard. After the loss the previous week to Vincent’s we had a meeting and the guys responded to what we wanted from them.

“Particularly defensively, we saw that in the first half against Killester but then in that third quarter we have to give credit to Killester because they hurt is with their physicality.

“Good teams will look at how you want to play and take you out of your comfort zone and they did that in the third quarter. They were very aggressive defensively and shut us down. We just have to be ready for that and to respond.

“There’s no doubt that we have the talent in our team to beat anybody and we have shown that even against Killester, the best team in the country at the moment. I believe the stats show they are the best team defensively and they are second offensively so that shows you what we were up against.

“But it was a tough loss against Killester because of how well we played in the first half. For us to hold them to 86 even though we had that bad third quarter does show that we are making progress defensively.

“So now we have a series of home games coming up and they are really going to be must-win games if we’re going to make the play-offs because the teams we are playing are all mid-table fighting for those last play-off places.

“So we have to make home advantage count and I believe we can do that. We have this trip to Templeogue and then home to Tralee and that will be a real test of our resilience for sure.”