Nobody in attendance could tell how many times the ball bounced on the rim before it went in. Not even the man who shot it.

“It felt like the ball was up there for five seconds and hit every centimeter of the rim – but I’m just glad that it went in,” Justin Engesser said.

The CSCS senior hit a runner in the lane with four seconds left to lift his Lions to a last-second 40-38 victory over host Manitou Springs.

The matchup between two of the top 3A teams in the state lived up to the hype.

The teams exchanged the lead throughout, before an Engesser 3-pointer put his team up 38-31 with 5:05 left in the fourth quarter. From then on, CSCS (11-2, 5-0 3A Tri-Peaks) was in pure survival mode. The Lions clung to a 38-36 lead for the final three minutes, and saw three different 3-point attempts for Manitou Springs (11-1, 3-1) miss the mark.

“We had a lot of open looks and didn’t knock them down,” Manitou Springs coach Ken Vecchio said. “We’re a better shooting team than that, and we have to make those shots. It’s not like we have a 6-5 guy in the post who we can feed.”

CSCS dodged several bullets, but a turnover with just over a minute left led to a Cole Sienknecht layup to tie things up.

The Lions went to the drive-and-stall offense they employed for the last five minutes of the game, and there was only one man who was going to take the final shot.

“I was just going to let him go and do it,” CSCS coach Mark Engesser said of his son, Justin. “I wanted him to drive with about eight seconds left, and either we go to overtime or we win. It’s a dogfight when we play these guys, and they very easily could’ve beaten us tonight.”

Engesser scored 15 of his team’s 40 points, including the final five – which came exactly five minutes apart. Noah Hopkins contributed 11 points for the Lions, who are now in the driver’s seat for another conference title.

“Manitou was No. 2 in the state coming into this game, and we knew they wanted us bad,” Justin Engesser said. “They haven’t beaten us in . I don’t know how many years, and it feels amazing to win a game like this when we can’t make a shot or rebound the ball. We aren’t even at our potential yet.”

It was a tough loss for a Manitou Springs team which entered the game scoring 66 points per contest. The shots simply wouldn’t fall for the majority of the game.

“It came down to execution, and we didn’t run our offense like we normally do,” said Sienknecht, who led all scorers with 16 points. “We were too sloppy with the ball and didn’t work it around for open shots, and when we got open shots, we thought about it too much and missed them.”

The teams will almost certainly play at least once more – if not twice – this season. Engesser relishes the opportunity.

“We know they’ll want us bad, and I say bring on the show,” he said. “I love playing in these kinds of games. It’ll be fun.”

Colorado Department of Transportation Bus Operations Manager Michael Timlin board the Bustang, a new interregional bus service, as it makes its maiden voyage in Colorado Springs Thursday, June 4, 2015. (Michael Ciaglo, The Gazette)

Michael Ciaglo, The Gazette