In a season overflowing with moments of misery, Glasgow Rocks plunged fresh depths last night with a 67-65 loss to Sheffield Sharks that left their player-coach Sterling Davis fixed to the bench in a state of disbelief.

17 points in front and coasting with eight minutes left at the Emirates Arena, the hosts pushed the self-destruct button and blew themselves apart.

With just two games of the British Basketball League campaign left, their hopes of reaching the play-offs are now hanging by the slenderest of threads. In ninth place, and with their destiny out of their hands, the American acknowledges that his own position will be under threat should his side be despatched on their summer vacation come next weekend.

To survive, it will likely take two victories and a vast improvement on the approach which saw Glasgow give up 13 consecutive points as Sheffield rallied. "I'm in shock," Davis admitted. "It was just such a disappointing way to finish it off. But we just keep finding new ways to throw games away. We went away defensively from what we know and offensively, we stopped doing what was working for us."

After a slow start, Davis' men used an 18-4 run to blast 39-28 clear at half-time and with Chris Johnson scoring a game-high 21 points, the Rocks moved as much as 17 in front when Alex Marcotullio, the Great Britain internationalist, hit a three-pointer which capped a 11-0 burst midway through the second half.

However Sheffield surged back from the dead with a 21-2 burst as the Rocks folded. "There's a lack of confidence, sure," Davis added. "But it's been the story of the season. We can be two different teams within a game, or even a half or a quarter."

Newcastle Eagles secured the league title for a record sixth time by thrashing Surrey United 106-58. Paul Gause and Malik Cooke had 23 points each as the Tyneside outfit completed the season with just five defeats to end a spell of two years without a major prize.