After Dartmouth erased a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter of the South sectional final at UMass-Boston, it became clear that somebody was going to have a chance to be the star.

Yesterday, it was Brendan Monteiro's turn. After the Indians' Mike Toole scored with less than 10 seconds left to tie the game, the Knights senior guard drove inside, pulled up, and hit an 8-foot jumper with 1.1 seconds left to send CM back to TD Banknorth Garden with an 81-79 victory. The Knights will try to defend their EMass title tomorrow at 6 p.m. against North champion Reading.

"I wanted to get back to [the Garden]," Monteiro said when he was asked about what was going through his mind on his final drive. "I had a lot of time. Coach [Denis Tobin] set a one-on-one play, I took the shot, and it just went in."

The Knights looked like they were going to cruise to the South title, holding a 63-46 edge in the third quarter. But Dartmouth went on an 18-5 run over the next six minutes to pull within 4. Jeff Tagger answered for CM with a trey, but the Indians rattled off a 7-0 spurt, capped by a Jordan Todman put-back, to tie the game at 71.

Tobin figured that Dartmouth was going to make a late run - a belief that became amplified when CM starting forward Julian Colarusso fouled out with 4:48 left.

"With Julian out, I knew we were vulnerable," he said. "When we got in a bit of a scoring drought, they started scoring and I was hoping we could score a few hoops. We feed off emotion. But when we're not scoring, we kind of get still. But once we got a couple of hoops - Allen Harris had a big drive down the lane - it got us going again and I thought we'd be able to hold out."

A Monteiro layup followed by a Harris score pushed the CM lead to 75-71. But Owen Higham hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 1. The Knights' Mike Ennis hit two free throws with 58.5 seconds to go, but a wild final minute was set up by the Indians' Justin Mello, who buried a 3-pointer to tie the game at 77 with 45 seconds left.