Mario Hoops 3-on-3, while being as fun of a game as it is, is not the ideal game to speedrun mainly because it has an in-game timer with unskippable loading screens. Due to these limitations, any run under any category is sure to have a specific time that cannot be lessened. For Flower Cup and Star Cup, whether you are playing on Normal or Hard difficulty, the perfect run is 17 minutes and 17 seconds. There have been many attempts to try to lower it to a 17:16 for a while, but with no success at all. No matter how fast one is with the cup and character selection screen, the difference is only that of a couple hundredths of a second. It's not very often when a game's category has an acknowledged time cap, but Mario Hoops 3-on-3 certainly has one indeed. So if you happen to see one of the 6 mentioned categories with a 17:17 time, know that it is a dead category.

Sincerely, Hoopla Fish