THE Basingstoke Bison qualified for the end of season play-off finals in Coventry, after a thrilling 3-2 win over visiting Milton Keynes Lightning on Saturday.

The visitors arrived in Basingstoke with a 100 per cent record in the post season, but were still looking for their first win of the campaign in Hampshire.

The home side started the better, but as expected MK started to haul themselves into the contest.

In a tight first 20 minutes, which could have gone either way, it was the Lightning who struck first.

Blaz Emersic fired home from just inside the blue line through a crowd of players.

The second session saw the Bison turn up the pressure and after great work from Ivan Antonov, treading the puck into the slot, Joe Miller applied the finish to tie the game.

Man of the match Miller then scored again on his next shift. This time he was found behind the goal by Rene Jarolin and managed to find the net, via the back of MK goalie Przemyslaw Odrobny.

The goals were coming thick and fast now and Joe Rand made it 3-1 at 31:38, as the Canadian followed in his own rebound.

As the period came to a close an awful elbows call by referee Stephen Matthews on Kurt Reynolds for what looked like a clean hit saw MK have a powerplay chance.

The final session saw the Bison have the upper hand, but once again the boos rang out around the arena as Matthews sin binned Dan Scott.

This was after he took exception to being tripped by Mikolaj Lopuski. The altercation which followed, saw both players deserve penalties, but only Scott made it to the sin bin.

There were even more boos when MK converted the man advantage after nine seconds from Antti Holli at 52:42.

This sparked another altercation with Lopuski, this time with Derek Roehl, who went to the sin bin, but this time MK failed to score.

After this the Herd had more of the play and ran down the clock to make it four wins out of four against MK this season on home ice.

Last Wednesday night, the Bison won in Hull 4-2. They never looked back after taking the lead after 74 seconds from Roehl.

The Pirates levelled things by the first break, on the powerplay, thanks to James Chilcott.

Rand put the Herd ahead again in the second session and once again on the powerplay Hull equalised from Andrej Themar.

The Bison took the lead for a third time at 47:23 as Aaron Connolly netted.

The victory was sealed with an empty net goal from Roehl, a minute from the end of the game.

Tonight, the Herd complete their play-off group campaign with a trip to Swindon.