Sullivan Phillips predicted his new team would bury his old and the Bermudian basketball star was proved right.

Phillips joined the Brighton Bears from the Birmingham Bullets in the summer and the two teams clashed in the British Basketball League at the weekend, Brighton running out 114-77 winners with the Islander bagging nine points in the bargain.

"We're going out to destroy them. No hard feelings, it's business. We should beat them quite easily," said a fired-up Phillips in Brighton's Argus newspaper on the eve of the clash.

He lived up to his boast and put in a performance that at one point had the crowd on its feet.

With the sides locked at 43-all at the end of the first half, Phillips drove from coast to coast during an unanswered eight-point run.

He continued to impress as the match wore on, his second-half highlight coming when he dished back-to-back no look passes to Michael Brown and Kendrick Warren, drawing huge cheers from the fans.

Phillips believes he has made a good move in joining the south coast outfit and with the side already having beaten Thames Valley and Milton Keynes in their opening matches the future looks bright.

"If we play how we are supposed to play, practice should be harder than games," the 24-year-old guard told the Argus. "I'm going against Randy Duck, Mike Brown, Andy Gardiner, players like that every day in practice.

"We just go at it. These guys are veterans, they know the game and I learn different tricks from them.

"We battle. We really go at it and it's fun."

Phillips knows the work is essential from his experiences last season when Birmingham toiled under the weight of domestic and European fixtures. They won six of their nine Champions Cup games but still went out.

"Like I've said to these guys at Brighton, you're going to get three games a week, maybe even four, and if you're not focused or ready for it, it's going to be hard," he said.

"Nick (Nurse, coach) was talking to my agent in the summer about Europe and obviously I've played internationally so I wanted to come back and do some more of that this year.

"Europe last year was tough. It's a step up this year but that one was no slouch either.

"We did well but we were a young team and we didn't execute under pressure but this year we've got a lot of veterans.

"We're stacked, unbelievably so, so we'll probably do well."