JEREMY Hyatt believes Sunday's British Basketball League Trophy final will bring the best out of him.

The Newcastle Eagles guard says he expects to rise to the occasion when the holders take on the Leicester Riders at the Coventry Skydome.

Both teams topped the standings in the group stages and finished with identical records, but in the BBL Championship the Eagles are second, while Leicester are down in fifth.

Fab Flournoy's team will start favourites and Hyatt intends to put on a performance worthy of the occasion.

"Without doubt the bigger games bring the best out of me," said the American. "The one-off games are where you are playing for all the marbles, so to speak.

"It's what you work for throughout the season, to play in big games so when that opportunity comes, if you've been working hard in practice everything will come to you.

"When the big games come I try to take it upon myself to perform at the highest level."

The Eagles won the BBL Cup in December and Hyatt says it was important that the team continued last season's success.

"We want to win every game and it didn't matter who was in front of us. It was psychologically important for us to stay on top because we won the last cup there was last season, so to win the first one this season propelled us in the right direction," he said.

"Last year we were searching, searching, searching and we found ourselves towards the end. This year we came in knowing ourselves a little bit better.

"We've got a year's more experience and I think in the long run that will help us out. We're a little bit more comfortable with one another because we've played with one another for another year.

"From that standpoint, our mentality is a little bit different because we're more confident.

"Last year we had guys we felt could win but we weren't really sure. It came through trial and error. We worked hard last year and we had a lot of accolades for that and a lot of silverware."