Elizabeth Lutz of California had an off-balance 3-pointer bounce off the backboard at the buzzer as the Lady Pintos fell 44-41 to Skyline on Monday.
The Lady Tigers missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 3.9 seconds remaining, California got the rebound and pushed the ball up to Lutz for a running attempt at a long 3 that clanged off the mark.
"The girls executed exactly the way we wanted to," California coach Bobby Sangster said. "Mara (Caudel) did a good job advancing the ball, Elizabeth saw they had Kayla (Allison) covered up and she took the shot she had to take. In that situation, you're just looking for an opportunity."
The Lady Pintos were trying to knock off a second ranked team in a week. Skyline is ranked third in Class 2 and the Lady Pintos beat Carl Junction, which is No. 1 in Class 4, on Friday in the semifinals of the Eldon Tournament.
"We felt like we let one slip away," Sangster said. "Skyline I'm sure feels very good about the win, and they deserve to because they made the plays they needed to down the stretch to get the win."
Neither team scored after McKinsey Mountain of Skyline got a layup with 1:54 remaining.
California had a turnover, and missed a two-pointer and 3-pointer in that stretch.
The Lady Tigers turned the ball over twice and missed the front end of a 1-and-1 in the final 1:54 of the game.
The Lady Pintos took a 23-22 lead at halftime and scored the first eight points of the second half to lead 31-22 with 6:21 remaining in the third quarter.
Allison scored six of her nine points during the 8-0 run.
She knocked down a 3 from the right wing in the first seven seconds of the half and drained another from the same spot with 6:49 remaining in the third quarter.
Ashtyn Goans' layup at the 6:21 mark capped of the run.
"We have't done a lot of that this year and to see us come out that hot that quick (was good)," Sangster said. "Kayla buried a couple 3s. We had some nice assists to her so it was easy for us to make that run."
But the California offense sputtered after that, only managing a Goans free throw in more than nine and a half minutes of play.
The Lady Tigers rolled off 16 points on 8-of-15 shooting in that span to take a 38-32 lead in the middle of the fourth quarter.
"Defensively, we didn't perform at a high level at all," Sangster said. "They kind of took it to us. It's all stuff that we can look at, changes that maybe need to be made and then we go from there."
At times, California had issues running its offense against Skyline's full-court pressure.
After Skyline started the game off with a layup, California was called for a five-second violation on the inbound.
On the Lady Pintos' next possession, Skyline forced a five-second closely-guarded violation.
California also failed to inbound the ball in five seconds two more times during the game.
However, the Lady Pintos were able to handle the pressure during big stretches of the game and only turned the ball over 13 times.
"They are very, very good at it and for us to handle their press as well as we did tonight, I was very proud of the girls' effort," Sangster said.
Lutz led California with 10 points.
California (10-9) will host Eldon on Thursday in a rematch of Saturday's Eldon Tournament title game, which the Lady Mustangs won 47-41.
After that, the Lady Pintos travel to Helias on Saturday for the Central Bank Shootout.
"We're going to have to find a way to try to put it all together and find a way to get some wins before (districts) come," Sangster said.