Nick Nurse has come within six inches of taking his Brighton Bears from worst to first.

Now he wants them to move on and complete the amazing turn around by winning at Wembley.

The south coast outfit were the laughing stock of the British League for years.

Champions back in the great days at Durrington, when Alan Cunningham and Colin Irish ruled the British game, a move along the Sussex coast had done nothing to take them back to such dizzy heights.

In the last three years of their existence, Worthing Bears finished 11th, 12th and 13th in a 13-team league.

Their Brighton successors followed that with two successive wooden spoons when the six-team southern conference was introduced.

It was enough to test even the most patient club owner, a category into which Bears' Romek Kriwald certainly fits.

Kriwald surprised no one when he showed coach Mark Dunning the door after 32 defeats in 41 games last year.

But his next move sent shockwaves through the British game as Nick Nurse looked in at a low key pre-season game and was unveiled as Bears' new coach.

Nurse, a Wembley winner with Birmingham and Manchester, had just added the southern conference title to his portfolio with London Towers and was considering an offer to join the back room coaching staff at Real Madrid.

It was tempting, but the chance to buy into his own club, build a team and inspire a basketball revolution in a city already buzzing in so many aspects of its daily life, proved irresistible.

The results have exceeded even his high expectations.

Joint top of the conference, a first play-off spot for six years, Trophy quarter-finalists, ground-breaking coverage on terrestrial television and packed houses in both Brighton and Burgess Hill.

Now he is setting his sights even higher as the play-offs loom.

Many would see Wembley as the icing on the cake but the boss reckons success, starting in Sunday's quarter-final with Newcastle or Leopards, is a must.

As 1,200 happy fans headed out of The Triangle on Sunday still on a high from the last home game of the season, Nurse sat upstairs, humming The Great Escape, which has become the team's end-of-game anthem, and quietly reflecting on what might have been.

He said: "Nobody remembers who comes second but people have to realise what a strong southern conference this is.

"Birmingham are a good basketball team. I have been saying that since we beat them by 20 midway through the season, and they haven't made the play-offs.

"We went 3-1 with them in our four games, we went 3-1 with Leopards and 4-0 with Milton Keynes but we were 2-2 with Thames Valley and that cost us."

Dropping two games to the bottom team in the south was certainly expensive, though both those came early in the campaign, when Nurse was still piecing his team together.

Tigers' Bracknell venue was also the venue for a turning point in Bears' season.

It was there that Albert White hit 40 points in a Trophy tie and Bears, after an uncertain start to the season, scored a landmark 108-96 win.

Suddenly they were embarking on a ten-game sequence which would see them lose just once.

A dramatic buzzer-beater by captain Randy Duck at Leopards put them firmly on play-off course and, when they thrashed the same opponents by 21 three weeks later, title talk was in the air.

A run of seven wins from eight games in the final month meant Towers were never allowed to get away at the top, but their record of three wins from four games with Bears gave them the title.

And that's where the six inches came in. That was how far Mike Brown's shot on the buzzer was from bouncing in and turning a one-point defeat into a two-point win at home to Towers in December.

Hard work by Nurse and his off-court team, headed by Steve and Sandy Swanson, has helped pack both the team's home venues.

Younger followers make a real occasion of it by enjoying coaching sessions with Nurse and his assistants before the games.

Some lucky children have even had the team at their schools to teach them basketball skills, American geography and the benefits of a healthy diet.

The older fans seem to enjoy match nights even more than the kids.

Blue wigs or hair dye, team shirts, silly songs and blue towels have all been given an airing at games. As have inflatable ducks with eager expressions on their faces in tribute to the skipper.

Kriwald admitted: "This has certainly exceeded my expectations from where we were at the end of last season.

"But as this season has progressed, the expectation has increased and there is almost an element of disappointment that we did not win the title.

"We need to take a step back and take a look at where we finished. That's fantastic for the Bears and everyone involved."

Nurse dislikes the concept of a neutral venue for a quarter-final but wants Bears fans, whom he rates the best in the country, to turn Sunday's clash into a home tie.

He said: "Right now we would like to play until about July because this team like each other and play well together.

"Our games with Milton Keynes and Chester last week were great.

"You had teams that were going at it with real intensity and basketball's great when it's like that.

"There are some dangerous teams in the play-offs, but we are pretty dangerous too right now and I think we can make a serious run at it."