THE Hawkesbury Jets' dreams of making up for their devasting preliminary final exit in last year's NSW State League basketball competition have copped a triple blow, with three of the team's stars leaving the club.
Starting five heroes in the Jets' 21-match unbeaten run in 2009, Ben Hawkesley, Rob Crane and Bruce Wells have all signed with two time defending champions the Penrith Panthers for this season.
The departures create what looks, on paper, to be the strongest State league squad assembled in recent memory.
The Panthers have also landed stars Anto Lalic (Parramatta) and Steve Gavrilovic (Hornsby) from the higher level Waratah Basketball League.
There is even more bad news for both the Jets and the Springwood Scorchers, with the Panthers re-joining them in the same pool in 2010, after being separated last year.
While the Panthers were out of the Nepean Valley pool in 2009, the Jets crushed the Scorchers to retain the annual PhotoExcel- lence Cup for a second successive year.
The return of this year's red-hot Panthers line-up to the three-team local derby will mean they start formidable favourites to regain the Cup.
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