They say that form goes out the window when it comes to a cup final, however, when the two best teams in the country come face to face, momentum and continuity look set to play their part.
Saturday night at the National Basketball Arena will see Killester take on last year's champions, UCC Demons, in the final of the Pat Duffy National Cup, with both sides arriving into the decider in top form.
Table-toppers Killester come into the game off the back of an 11-game winning streak in the Super League, which included a comprehensive 10-point win over tonight’s opponents back in November, and they will be confident of securing the silverware at the Tallaght Arena.
The Dublin outfit will look to employ their fast-paced, energetic game and aim to disrupt the Demons at every opportunity, hoping to utilise the quality of players like Kason Harrell and Paul Dick to attack the Cork unit.
For an "undersized" team, Killester can mix it physically and it should make for an intriguing contest against the powerful UCC collective.
It’s been a remarkable 12 months for the Cork side who were in real relegation trouble at this stage of the season during the last campaign, before they stormed to the National Cup victory over Ballincollig.
And now Demons are looking to go back-to-back in a game that is unlikely to mirror the earlier league contest, which Killester won by double-digits at their Clontarf venue.
"It would be one of the highlights of my career because not many teams get to go back-to-back, and this year we’re second in the league behind Killester, so it’s only right that one and two teams play each other for the Cup," said Demons’ Elijah Tillman, speaking to the media ahead of the decider.
"We have been able to gradually build and keep going, and I think I am more prepared than I was last season as I only came in in December.
"Killester, I know they’re going to run up and down and score as fast as they can. I know they play incredibly good defence, pressure the ball a lot and they are a very physical team.
"They are not a team that we are unfamiliar with, so I except them to give us their best shot for sure."
Far from their best when the sides met in November, however, Tillman attributes the defeat to a combination of double-header fatigue, combined with a team that was still evolving and growing into the campaign.
"This season, we were able to start from the beginning and build from last season, and I think the players have stepped up big time," said Tillman.
"David Lehane, he’s been playing great, the Hannigans, unreal, we have so many players on the rise and so many good Irish players on our team, and I feel a lot of teams don’t have that.
"I feel really confident, and since we last played them, I feel like we have definitely taken steps forward," he added.
"The last time we played them, they caught us on a double header weekend. For that game, we were missing a few key components. That was Pat Robinson’s second game with us, so that’s a big piece… So over time, we are more consistent, we’ve gelled more, we understand more and have a feel for each other.
"Don’t get me wrong, Killester are still a great team so regardless we are going to have to bring our A game, but like I said I’m very confident from how we played that game up to now."
And American Robinson has been earmarked as being a key man to watch by Killester’s Kason Harrell, who is expecting a completely different encounter compared to their first meeting.
Harrell emphasised the importance of his side being able to play their own game in the final, which will require real focus on their rebounding performance to allow their speed game to flow and thrive.
"I think for us being a small, undersized team, it gives us trouble especially on the rebound side of things and Demons have a lot of size, so we’re going to have to be able to manage that," said Harrell.
"I think this one is going to be a bit different, as they had a couple of guys missing for that [league] game. And their American Pat Robinson had just got in, and now he is more comfortable playing over here, so I think it is going to be a very tightly contested game.
"I think it’s going to be very fast paced; both teams like to get up and down, so it’s going to come down to us being able to manage the rebounding side of it as the Demons have a lot of size, and for us to be able to get out and run, so it should be a very interesting game."
Killester may be on a major winning run, however, they also had to overcome a couple of early hurdles in the league campaign, and yet Harrell believes that the team have really evolved this season and are now playing a game that really suits the players.
"I think we finally have an identity," said Harrell. "We hit a rough patch early in the season when we lost back-to-back games, so after that we had to find out what our identity was.
"We tried to speed the game up, and defensively, we want to make guys make quick decisions instead of making it easy for them, and then try to get out of transition and run.
"Our chemistry has been really good all year, we’re such a close-knit group on and off the court, which helps us play together and when adversity strikes in games we are able to stay together and not turn on each other."
And while the Dublin club are among the most decorated in the country, dating back to their three-in-a-row league success in the 1970s, Harrell, in his fourth season at the club, has yet to land either of the big two with the north Dubliners’ last National Cup success coming back in 2019.
So he is aiming to make it a double helping of success to take back across the River Liffey this weekend, with the Killester women also in the hunt for glory in Sunday’s Paudie O’Connor National Cup final against Liffey Celtics.
"We’re trying to make our own history, and the only way to do that is by winning," said Harrell.
"We know that we have a really good chance to make history; not just our men but our women’s club made it to the cup final, which is a big moment.
"So we want to make history, but we know that only happens if we get the job done."
