White's 3-pointer in the final minute was enough to give Apex a 58-55 boys basketball win over Terry Sanford in the N.C. High School Athletic Association 4-A East Regional tournament.

Apex will meet Jack Britt in Saturday's regional final.

"I felt like had a bad game and it was my time to step up," said White, whose 3-pointer with 44 seconds remaining gave Apex the lead back after being down eight points in the quarter.

Still, it was Apex that jumped out to the most impressive lead of the night in the first half.

That all seemed to come together in the final minute of the first quarter, when Kyle Waters was first rejected on the perimeter with the Sanford crowd to his back. That bunch chided him, but he responded by recovering the ball and then hitting a 3-pointer to give his team a 16-12 lead that held until the second quarter.

Apex used a mix of inside penetration and outside shooting to build a bigger lead in the second quarter.

That might have been best illustrated in a 20-second sequence when the Cougars' Brendan Gilmartin hit a 3-pointer and a moment later, teammate Tim Plummer grabbed a steal and hurried down the lane, drawing a foul as his layup settled into the hoop.

"We played our best first half of the year," Cougars coach Dave Neal said.

Apex shot 50 percent from the field in the first half, compared to 33 percent for Sanford. The Cougars led 39-23 at halftime.

But after going up by 16 points at the end of the first half, the Bulldogs came back.

Josh Hayes sparked the Bulldogs at the start of the third quarter, and his teammates followed. Not only did he score the first two points of the quarter, but he later started a 3-point flurry, hitting a pair from beyond the arc, while Zach Faircloth added a pair himself, the second of which cut the lead to 43-38 with 2:39 left in the third quarter.

"Momentum is huge in this game," Neal said. "It's hard to keep your composure. ... I called every timeout I had to try to get the momentum turned back around."

The Bulldogs (24-4) found themselves up by eight points with 5:29 left in the game on a 3-pointer by Faircloth.

But that was the final field goal Sanford would get.

With 42 seconds left in the game, White put the finishing touches on an 11-1 run with his 3-pointer that gave Apex a 56-55 lead.

"Luckily I had enough time to step on and make a good shot," White said.

Plummer led the Cougars with 14 points, and Weston Murphy added 12.

Sanford had a few chances in the closing minute, but Apex came up with defensive rebound and called a timeout with 2.1 seconds left.

Sanford was forced to foul twice to get over the limit and send Kyle Waters to the line with 1.4 seconds left. He hit both shots.