All but three Veritas Christian players have at least another year left in school, but Thursday night it sure seemed as if all the Eagles were playing in their career finale against Kansas City North at East Lawrence Center.

“The juniors sure did bail us out, didn’t they,” Veritas coach Doug Bennett said with a smile after his juniors scored all but one of the Eagles’ 13 fourth-quarter points to lead Veritas to a 69-65 victory on Senior Night.

“That was just an awesome job of those guys stepping up their roles,” added Bennett, whose team improved to 13-7 and, depending on how Veritas does in its next two league games, could be seeded anywhere from second to fifth in the Kansas Christian Athletic Assn. state tournament Feb. 24-26.

But Thursday wasn’t all fun and games for Veritas’ fans and parents — many of whom were wearing their son’s buttons or nervously holding a flower from their seniors — because the Knights cut Veritas’ 15-point fourth-quarter lead to one, 64-65, with 2:14 to go.

Things turned worse for Veritas when leading scorer Mark Randtke, who scored a game-high 36 points, fouled out with 1:27 left.

After Veritas had three turnovers in the final 90 seconds, what once seemed to be a sure-fire victory now looked like an Eagle loss could be looming.

Yet, even after it looked like another travel might be called against Veritas with just 25 ticks on the clock, junior Casey Woods fed the ball to a wide-open Matt Steinle under the basket. The junior forward hesitated for half a second looking like he might try to kick the ball back out and burn more time, but instead converted the easy put-in for the 69-65 advantage.

“Well, coach always tells us when we’re running our Carolina stall offense that if you get the chance to attack the basket you have to,” said Steinle, who had just one other basket in the game, but has been known this season for having a knack for scoring late.

“I just decided to go up because I knew we’d been pretty passive, and I didn’t want to give them another opportunity.”

Early on Randtke made sure that wouldn’t happen when he tallied 14 of Veritas’ 22 first-quarter points. K.C. North scored just 12. The junior standout was 15-of-23 from the field and grabbed eight rebounds, but senior Paul Kempf — who was honored with seniors Noah Barclay and Joel Martell — said it was the junior class as a whole that proved huge, including nine points from junior forward Andrew Bartlow.

“Randtke got us going early and then those other juniors played big late,” said Kempf, who scored nine points and tallied the only point from a non-junior in the fourth quarter.

“Man, that was just an unbelievable way to end things at home, but hopefully we have one more big game out there.”