Whoever could lift above their fatigue at the end of three days of action was always going to be the key factor in deciding the winners at the 2014 Wanganui HoopNation finals yesterday afternoon.
And it was the two men's sides who had done it all before who had the measure of their championship games as the Auckland squad Choppers, with several members of the 2013 winners Youthtown, claimed the $3000 Pakaitore-Whanganui Men's Premier grade with a comfortable 65-45 victory over fellow Auckland team Blitz.
In the $2500 Men's A division, the 2013 champions OBC, a Palmerston North team with a local Wanganui flavour, were well in control of the final with a 49-22 defeat of Auckland's Horse Lyf.
Choppers had beaten their semifinal opponent Thats Us 51-42 in the morning, and despite the loss of their influential Tall Black Lindsay Tait with a calf injury, were still pretty confident going in against the tired Blitz team.
Blitz had pulled the upset of HoopNation in their semifinal when they shocked the undefeated Junior Tall Blacks 42-38, by out-muscling the talented youngsters and managing to break up their structure.
But it had taken a lot out of them and Choppers, who had lost to the Junior Tall Blacks on Day 1 but been relatively comfortable since then, recognised that if they started with a hiss and a roar they would be hard to peg back.
And so it proved as big Casey Frank did not hold anything back as he and Hayden Allen had a sixth-sense connection with long passes and no-look pops, always trying to get under the hoop.
Aaron Nowell also got into position well, while Cairns Taipan's Brooke Ruscoe looked good but was biding his time before some jaw-dropping play in the second half.
Going full bore had Choppers out to a 12-4 advantage and although Blitz player Trent Luli attacked the key and Jemel Freesir hustled hard on defence to peg it back to 17-13, they were emptying fuel reserves they just did not have.
Ruscoe hit a one-handed dunk off a nice Allen pass, but he was just warming up as Choppers stretched out to a 35-18 advantage by halftime.
The 24-year-old Ruscoe got up for a sweet alley-oop dunk early in the third quarter and pretty soon he was putting on an aerial display with one and two-handed slams as the pace had slowed and there were more chances for breakaways or setting up for the three-pointer.
Both Allen and Joe Jackson, who had joined Choppers from the Kaia team to replace Tait, hit long shots just before the three-quarter time buzzer for an untouchable 52-27 advantage.
Blitz players Josh Tuaiti and Jamie Reddish never stopped trying to hit the three or sneak through the tall timber with a lay-up.
But Choppers had the buffer and time to try to some stuff, letting their stocky bench player Travis Hunt show his hand at nailing three-pointers, and after being a little off with his radar he sank a couple at the back end of the match to get the Springvale Stadium crowd cheering.
Ruscoe added another alley-oop off Jackson, while Frank connected with a reverse jam to give the fans some sizzle.
One-sided final OBC had the winning of their Men's A final with Horse Lyf within the first eight minutes of the game as the Aucklanders' missed a series of shots.
It was not until Christopher Etiene made a lay-up with 90 seconds left until quartertime that his team was on the board, yet by then the hustle of OBC playmaker Johnny Southey against the tall timber defence, plus some nice passing sequences involving him, Jayde Brown and Zeb Nicklin, had them 10-0 up.
From 13-5 at quartertime, OBC pressed their advantage, Brown getting a shot in despite tangling with Etiene and certainly telling him about it afterwards.
Brown then hit a three, which Horse Lyf's Curtis Stewart returned in kind, but at 27-17 by halftime the game was OBC's to polish off.
They did that in a physical third quarter as Horse Lyf put up another couple of air balls or couldn't find players in space, with Stacey Lambert picking up where Southey left off.
At 33-19 entering the final period, Lambert got up to swat away a Stewart lay-up, while Stuart Slack combined with Terry Tanoa for a nice pass to lay-up combination, as OBC allowed no scoreboard respectability for their opponents, who had fought so hard for three days, closing the match out with two late buckets 49-22.