Bristol Flyers are aiming for a first British Basketball League play-off final appearance after a record-breaking season, says their head coach.

They face Manchester Giants in the play-off quarter-finals, with an aggregate score taken across two legs.

They travel to Manchester on Thursday before the return game on Sunday.

“It has been a great season for us in the regular season – to be able to break many records and get the most wins ever and finishing third, but the job is not done,” Andreas Kapoulas told BBC Points West.

“We said our goal is to be playing in that play-off final at the O2 in a couple of weeks’ time.”

‘No-one believed in us’

Bristol remarkably overcame a double-digit deficit this time last year to beat the Giants and reach the semi-final stage of the play-offs. They went through with an aggregate score of 173-171, scoring seven points in the final two minutes to progress to the final four for only the second time.

Despite this the club were largely written off at the start of this campaign, and predicted to finish at the bottom of the table by some pundits.

“Our coach has been reminding us all season, we remind ourselves all season, they didn’t even have us making the play-offs, they had us as the bottom seed,” forward Malcolm Delpeche said.

“No-one believed in us but at the end of the day we believed in ourselves.

“It’s nice to see that we backed ourselves and it’s coming to fruition for us.”

Kapoulas agreed that the fact the Flyers were undervalued before the season started has given them fuel to perform.

“We’re a young team, to do what we have done in this league is not easy, especially with so many experienced teams, teams with a lot more resources than we have, that has helped the motivation for sure,” Kapoulas said.

“We’ve certainly surpassed expectations but I think for our group we always had high expectations anyway, and certainly we think we can make a run in the play-offs.”