But in the end the Otago Nuggets had left themselves far too much to do.
The side rallied facing a 25-point deficit with just six minutes to play.
They got it back to within six, but the Southland Sharks held on to claim an 85-78 win at the Edgar Centre on Saturday.
It came a night after the Sharks beat the previously unbeaten Wellington Saints and catapulted atop the National Basketball League table.
While the Nuggets battled well early, a 14-point second quarter left them chasing the game.
At the other end, the Sharks piled on 28 in the same period.
That left the Nuggets trailing 45-33 at halftime, a margin which only grew as the Nuggets managed just another 14 third-quarter points.
The Sharks looked after Sam Timmins well and, while his 13 points and 16 rebounds read all right, it was an off night for the star centre.
Richie Rodger (13 points) and Pafe Momoisea (eight points) both provided handy shifts, but the absence of someone to take control was costly.
The Sharks were more energetic, more physical and more accurate.
Brayden Inger and Toby Gillooly hurt the Nuggets from deep, while forward Dom Kelman-Poto showed his class at times proving near unstoppable in racking up 24 points on nine of 12 shooting.
He had played little in the fourth quarter but returned to close out the game.
At 76-51, the Sharks began to run their bench.
The Nuggets began getting stops and their scoring was ignited by Rodger and Moss.
The Nuggets kept fighting and had the chance to reduce the gap to three on a Rodger three-pointer with 20 seconds left.
But it missed and the Sharks closed out the win.
Nuggets coach Brent Matehaere did not want to use the late shift in court as an excuse.
He said it was something both teams had to deal with.
The poor second quarter was what hurt the side.
"We weren’t able to score the basketball," he said.
"You’re looking at a14-point quarter to a 28-point quarter. That just can’t happen — we can’t be giving away that much.
"We didn’t get close-outs. They were able to hit their open shots and we didn’t hit ours. It was one of those games where you want everything to go well and it didn’t."
