Nikolov, the unselfish hero

First of all, we would like to congratulate you for the success in the decisive game of the EuroChallenge Top 16 round. You had some international experience befor signing to Hungary, what would you highlight about this win against Bonn?

I think this success is really important for our team and for the city of Szolnok, as well as for the whole Hungarian basketball society. It's a big thing that we've qualified for the last 8 and now, in my opinion, the opportunity for reaching something even greater is in our hands. Most importantly we have to play hard every time and concentrate by 100 percent, what's more, always try to make the next step in the competition, so we can't say that we achieved the best we could, we must go for the bigger challenge.

Did you think that you could go this far with the Olaj in the EuroChallenge when you've just signed to Szolnok?

I play every game by 100 percent of energy and concentration, it doesn't matter whether it is a Hungarian championship game or an international battle. So I'm not thinking about what is the maximum, I always give my best to help my team to win every game we play.

We saw that you had some fans from Bulgaria. Is it true?

Yes, it is. Some of them live in Budapest and an other fan lives in Szolnok. They come to support me and us, which is a very inspiring thing. What a good feeling is when you see the Bulgarian flag in the gym far away from your homecountry!

You will have a big game tomorrow against the league leading team, Falco. What do you expect from this derby and how dou you remember the szombathelyi team from the away match?

As you said, the Falco is the first team in the standings now and I think it says enough about them. In my opinion it is a good group of guys, our next oponent is both effective in defense and offense. We should go against them as motivated and focused as we played our EuroChallenge game. Of course we want to get the win, there is no other result that would be acceptable for us.

We must not forget that you had a really good individual performance on Tuesday. Was it your best game since you've been playing in Hungary?

I truly never think about a game or a performance from an individual standpoint. There are 5 players on the court at the same time in a team, there are 12 men in a roster, we all want to get the win, this is the most important. If I have been playing – for example - tennis, I would assess my game from that view, but in this case it is just good, but not the main point. In this team we all pass the ball to each other, this is the way we can be successful and win the important matches.

After going through the first two phase-rounds, are you thinking about the next opponent and the playoff games against the latvian Ventspils?

As I see, all of the 8 teams that qualified for this quarterfinal-round are at the same level. In the previous phases, there were some clubs that were not as strong as the others, but it is not the case anymore. We should correct our mistakes and have to work on our game in the next week. It will be essential to concentrate from the tipp off to the game ending buzzer in all of the forecoming games and in each minute we must go for the win. I'm really positive about our future and chances, I believe that we can make it to the Final Four. The first battle in Ventspils will be crucial, becasuse in case of stealing the win on the road (which is not impossible in my view) we can close the series in Szolnok in front of our fans. It's extremely hard for our opponents to play in Szolnok against us thanks to the attitude that those guys create in our Arena. We just have to be focused and go for the win, and we can make it!

With every challenge that we've passed succesfully our team is getting more and more confidence, and in our organization everybody thinks that it is possible to go further. After those huge wins, we all think that Szolnok really belongs to this elite group of teams.

Thanks for the interview!