Apex, a team that stood 4-9 at one point this season and suffered through a seven-game losing streak, advanced to the state 4-A boys basketball championship game with a 45-44 victory over a 27-win Fayetteville Britt squad on Saturday at Williams Arena.

Cougars senior standout and regional MVP Tim Plummer drove into the lane and dished off to sophomore Weston Murphy, who dropped in a shot off the glass with 6.4 seconds to play for the winning basket.

"I just kept telling myself to be patient," Plummer said of his team's final possession. "We had to be patient. I knew they were going to come at me with a double- or triple-team. I just tried to find a teammate."

Britt (27-5) got off two shots in the final three seconds: a 25-foot 3-point attempt by leading scorer Cornelius Snow (19 points) and a short follow shot by Xavier Nixon that just beat the buzzer. Both shots bounced off of the rim, sending the Cougars to Reynolds Coliseum next Saturday for the state title.

"They found a way," Apex coach David Neal said of his team. "They've been finding a way for five games now in the playoffs."

The Cougars (19-12) overcame a big Buccaneers squad featuring future ACC player C.J. Williams, who's headed to N.C. State in the fall.

The 6-foot-6 forward gave Britt its last lead of the night, 44-41, on a 3-pointer with 1:55 to play, but he was saddled with early foul trouble and sat out the last 12 minutes of the first half after picking up his second foul.

"Tim did a tremendous job on him," Neal said. "I was real proud of the job he did on both ends of the floor."

Williams, who matched up with Plummer on both ends of the floor, finished the game with just five points and five rebounds and admitted to being thrown by his early foul problems.

"When you get into early foul trouble, you can't do the same things you were doing earlier," Williams said. "He [Plummer] was playing me physical, and that's what I wanted to do: Be physical. But you can't be physical when you're in foul trouble."

Plummer had 13 points and seven rebounds; Murphy led the Cougars with 17 points.

"Playoff basketball in high school is like playoff basketball in the NBA or even March Madness with the NCAA," Britt coach Ike Walker said. "It's a game of styles, and the team that can adapt the best can go far."

After Williams put the Buccaneers up three, Apex senior DeArius White scored on a quick transition play to cut the lead to a point.

Britt tried to run down the clock on its next possession when junior Adam Perry tipped a pass into the hands of Murphy, giving the Cougars possession.

Perry, in keeping with the aforementioned biblical tale, even brought a baseball-sized, tan-colored rock into Saturday's postgame news conference that featured handwritten motivations like "resilience," "battle," "believe" and "don't give up."

After Perry's steal, Apex held onto the ball for the next 36 seconds, despite missing two shots. The Cougars got the ball back after Britt's Brandon Nichols traveled while coming down with a rebound, then took possession after its next miss when a jump ball went Apex's way, allowing Plummer and Murphy what would be the game-deciding turn with the rock.