Steve Parillon believes Brighton Bears can finish the season in the same style they finished their victory over Leicester Riders at the Brighton Centre last night.

Bears were staring down the barrel of a gun when they trailed by 11 late in the third quarter but produced a magnificent fightback to keep their play-off push on track.

Parillon was at the heart of what could turn out to be a crucial win over a free-falling Leicester Riders team who are now just three points ahead of Bears in the BBL table.

But Parillon has set his sights higher than the fifth place Riders currently occupy and is confident Bears can go on a winning run to sneak fourth place and home advantage in the play-offs.

"This was a big win," said Parillon, who scored 20 points and claimed 12 rebounds in an all-action display. "That's two wins out of two and keeps us in the running.

"Before the Plymouth game we set ourselves the target of trying to win as many of our last 12 games as possible and we've won two out of two so things are going well.

"We'll take it week by week but five of those games are at home and we're playing a lot of the teams around us in the table so I think we can really finish strongly.

"Leicester aren't having a great time at the moment and London Towers are struggling too so I don't see why we can't go for fourth place. Apart from the top two it is pretty tight between about eight teams but we are playing well and that is the important thing."

Riders went in to the match on the back of their first win in nine games after defeating Guildford Heat 76-58 on Saturday but they still looked like a team short on confidence in the first quarter.

Bears raced into a 22-14 lead with eight minutes on the clock until former Bear Ryan Huntley started to call the shots for the visitors.

With another old Brighton favourite Tony Holley cleaning up anything loose around the boards the Riders went on an 11-point run to suddenly take control of the game.

Only Parillon kept the Bears in touch as he scored ten of the home side's 12 points in the second quarter and limit Riders' half-time lead to 40-34.

It got worse before it got better for Brighton in the third quarter as the Riders went 56-45 in front but then Jerry Williams and Terrance McGee, in particular, began to fire on all cylinders to close the gap.

A three from Parillon on the buzzer meant Bears trailed just 55-58 going into the final quarter and Williams soon wiped out that deficit with a three followed by a crowd-pleasing dunk.

A repeat of the memorable match at Leicester back in January which went into five periods of overtime before Brighton eventually won looked on the cards with Bears only two points up with 45 seconds on the clock.

But McGee closed the door on Riders with a three followed by an and-one with 11 seconds to go and celebrated in style as the Bears fans went wild.

"We lost concentration in the second quarter and had to fight back," said Parillon. "We managed to stay in the game when we weren't playing well and then finished strongly in the fourth quarter to win it.

"I said before the game I didn't fancy any overtime like last time and I was getting worried for a while. But the most important thing is to end the game well and that's what we did."

The match also saw the return of Danny Midgley after five years playing in America and Spain. The 24-yearold guard from Burgess Hill played just three minutes.