Bury travelled to Saddleworth who hold the league's best recored in division one and were capable of an upset.

Bury's flowing offense found back door cuts for easy buckets as Mike Nichols consistently found the target from pin point accurate passes from his team. However the home side countered with three pointers by A. Smith who hit on two attempts. Bury held a shaky 6 point lead after one.

The second quarter belonged to Tom Hope and Alan Hall, Tom's cutting drives and Alan's shooting pushed the lead further for the visitors although 8 out of 10 missed free throws could have extended the lead but as it stood Bury held a 16 point lead at the half and seemed to have control of the game.

Saddleworth began to find the basket and clawed back some points with hot shooting by A. Smith taking it inside and also hitting formlong range. Bury's defence seemed sloppy at times and the lead was cut to ten with one quarter remaining.

A 9 to 4 run by the home side capped off by 5 points by Matt Thompson gave the home side some reason to believe. Bury allowed too many cuts to the basket and the game looked in doubt.

However, Bury are a well seasoned team and know when to dig deep and on this occasion went on a 16 - 0 run to put the game away. Chris McCormick took the ball strong to the basket and also found his open team mates showing his all round game.

Bury ended up 110 to 82 point winners and are on course to meet long time rivals Stockport in the Final.

Alan Hall and Mike Nichols led scorers with 40 and 27 points respectively.