Bristol Flyers head coach Andreas Kapoulas says his team are “hungry” after securing their best-ever finish in the British Basketball League.
The Flyers finished fourth in the BBL Championship and now face fifth-placed Manchester Giants in the play-offs.
They travel to Manchester on 28 April, before hosting the return fixture two days later.
“It’s a great moment for the club, getting a top-four finish,” Kapoulas told BBC Radio Bristol.
“At the start of the season we said we want to make it to the play-offs, we want to have the highest place possible and we want to finish with a winning record.
“We achieved the top-four finish, we’ve got a wining record going into the play-offs but we’re a little bit more hungry now. We have aspirations in the play-offs and we want to continue our run.”
Bristol Flyers were promoted to the BBL in 2014 and finished a previous high of sixth place in the 2017-18 season.
While they have progressed to the play-offs – featuring the top eight teams in the league – four times before, they have only ever reached the semi-finals once – in 2018 when they were beaten by Leicester Riders.
Kapoulas, who took over as coach in 2014, completely overhauled the squad at the start of the season. Only Raphell Thomas-Edwards and Josh Rogers were retained from last year’s team, with 10 new players signed.
“It’s great to see that we maintained two of our greatest players in Raph Thomas-Edwards and Josh Rogers and we wanted to build from there,” Kapoulas said.
“We’re the youngest team in the BBL, our average age is 25. Certainly finishing in the top four and having a team that has just been together just a few months is just a great feeling.”
Among the new signings for 2021-22 were five Americans and a number of rookie players signing their first professional contracts.
“Experience is important. When you bring rookie guys, guys that have only played college basketball, you know there is going to be a development process. They’ve got to understand the league, what it takes for them to be successful playing professional basketball,” Kapoulas continued.
“I think our guys have adjusted very well into that and I think that has made a big difference. Personalities all develop over the course of the year and I think it is a credit to the type of characters that we have, everything has ups and downs and it’s how you deal with it throughout the course of the year.
“It has been an incredible effort from all the guys, and certainly our American players, to get to the position we are in now.”
Bristol Flyers won six of their eight matches coming into the play-offs, which Kapoulas hopes will give them an edge in the two upcoming matches against Manchester. The winner progresses to the semi-finals ahead of the play-off final at the O2 Arena on 15 May.
“We are going with momentum, that’s for sure, but we also know that we cannot take any time off right now. Those type of games, especially those aggregate scores, in a five-minute spell a lot of things can happen so we’ve got to be really concentrated,” he said.
“It brings us confidence but we’re also mature to know we’ve got to pay attention to detail and we cannot afford to think back.”
