It will be baskets aplenty this weekend, but not of the Easter treat variety as one of the nation's largest basketball tournaments slams into Tauranga.

From Good Friday through to Monday, more than 135 basketball teams will converge on the city's courts for the 25th annual Basketball Pacific Easter Tournament.

The action can be found across three seperate Tauranga venues this Easter weekend. Photo: Tauranga City Basketball.

Divided into under-11, 13, 15, 17 and 19 categories, the competition will have extra spice with seven teams from across the Tasman joining the ranks.

And Tauranga City Basketball general manager Mark Rogers is predicting a big weekend of court action given the abundance of teams, needing three venues to get through all the matches – ASB Arena, QE2 Centre and Aquinas College.

'The Australian teams are elite teams that come from a state team tournament,” says Mark, 'so they are always pretty good.

'Waikato and Waitakere are usually quite strong, and from the Bay of Plenty there are the Rotorua and Tauranga teams.”

Tauranga City Basketball will field 13 teams in total, covering all men's and women's grades apart from the women's under-17, where some players are loaned out to other sides to ensure they get game time.

Each team will play between five and seven matches, while each division has an A and B grade due to the number of teams - something Mark is rapt with as the tournament's success continues to grow.

'It's huge and it's into its 25th year,” he explains. 'his is the biggest tournament in New Zealand and it just keeping on growing.

'It brings about 3,500 people to Tauranga for the weekend, so it's good for the city as well.”

Alongside the top-drawer court action is coach and referee education, with USA Women's Basketball Hall of Fame coach Jim Foster and former Tall Ferns coach Shawn Dennis flying in for the weekend.

Foster, 66, is the head coach of the women's basketball team at Chattanooga, having previously served as head coach over a number of other women's sides.

He was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the class of 2013.

He served as assistant coach or head coach of USA Basketball teams on nine different occasions, and is the current chair of the Women's Junior National Team Committee.

As head coach he lead the side to gold at the 1997 World University Games in Marsala, Sicily, and bronze at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

While assistant coach, the side claimed gold at both the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle and the World Championships in Malaysia in the same year.

In total, Foster has been part of the coaching staff of five gold medal teams and one bronze medal team for the USA, with an overall record of 27 wins and four losses.

Dennis took over as head coach at the Townsville Crocodiles in the Australian National Basketball League for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons after serving three seasons as assistant coach.

He has 25 years' experience, including coaching stints in the NZ NBL and with the Tall Ferns as well as a 10-year career as a player in the NBL from 1986 till 1996.

Play tips off from 8.30am on Friday.