KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Down by one point and only :00.3 on the clock.

“There’s not a lot you can do with that,” Tonganoxie High girls basketball coach Randy Kraft said.

Nothing, indeed, and K.C. Sumner escaped with a 53-52 Class 4A sub-state championship victory Saturday night in the Sabres’ gym.

With :06.7 showing and the score knotted at 52, Sumner had the ball but had to go the length of the floor. Everybody knew Marisah Henderson, the Sabres’ quicksilver senior point guard, would be bringing the ball virtually coast to coast.

“We were trying to slow Henderson down,” Kraft said, “but she got there a little before we wanted.”

Three-tenths of a second before the Chieftains wanted.

That’s when the clock was stopped by a whistle as the 5-foot-4 Henderson drove the lane into traffic. Henderson made the first free throw, purposely missed the second, and the game ended.

“We were trying to keep her contained,” Tongie junior Ali Pistora said of Henderson, “but I guess we didn’t do it very well.”

Pistora’s goal underneath – her only second-half basket – with :09.8 on the clock set the stage from the dramatic finish.

K.C. Sumner (20-3) earned a trip to the Class 4A state tournament in Salina despite shooting only 31.7 percent. During an eight-minute stretch of the first half, the Sabres missed 17 shots in a row.

All those bricks enabled the Chieftains (21-2) to post leads of as many as 13 points, but Sumner whittled the deficit to eight (28-20) at halftime.

Then the Sabres rediscovered their shooting touch in a 20-point third quarter. Sumner took its first lead in the last minute of the third quarter and led by five (47-41) with six minutes left. But Tongie battled back and made it a nail-biter at the end.

Henderson scored 10 of her game-high 14 points in the second half.

“She’s a player,” Kraft said of the Sabres’ floor leader. “We knew what she was capable of. When the game was on the line, she stepped up.”

Pistora and Shannon Carlin, who made a trio of three-pointers, paced Tonganoxie with 13 points apiece. The Chieftains’ only other loss was to Silver Lake in overtime.

“I’m really proud of the team coming this far,” Pistora said. “We had fun. We’ll remember this.”