Former York Vikings junior basketball coach Matthew Newby has come a long way since his time on the sidelines of under-15 and U16 games at York College.

After parting ways with York he secured the head coach position at Leeds Carnegie, and has never looked back.

In his five seasons at the helm he has guided Carnegie from the England Basketball League (EBL) division four all the way to division one, with the top division the only title that remains absent from his trophy cabinet.

In addition, Newby has won three successive British University Championships (BUCS) Premier North titles with the Leeds Metropolitan University team, and last season he coached them to the university’s first ever BUCS national title.

However, there are signs that Leeds Carnegie’s short-lived dominance, of university basketball at least, may have reached its zenith.

Leeds, having never lost more than one game in the regular BUCS season under Newby, have opened this campaign with three losses, two of which have been by 20-plus points.

That has put the team in a position where they may now struggle to even make the play-offs, a scenario that would have been unthinkable before the season.

Carnegie’s BUCS prospects are hardly likely to improve anytime soon as their next fixture comes in the form of an away trip to the BBL affiliated University of Worcester on Wednesday.

The team’s poor showing in BUCS is made even more bewildering by their excellent form in the much tougher EBL division one where they are looking more dominant than ever before, currently unbeaten after nine games and through to the quarter-finals in the National Cup and National Trophy.

Carnegie’s next EBL 1 game is a week today, when they host Brixton Topcats at Leeds Met’s Headingley Campus at 4pm.

Tickets are priced £3 adults, £1 children. A full fixture list is available by visiting the website www.englandbasketball.co.uk