The Manhattan High girls basketball team’s full-court press didn’t work for much of Friday night’s contest against Seaman.

For the first three quarters, the Lady Vikings found holes in it, and with 6-4 senior Jaylynn Evans-Patterson towering over the other nine players on the court, Manhattan had difficulty slowing down Seaman’s press-break, even with the Lady Indians’ 30-15 lead at halftime.

That became most evident in the third quarter, when Seaman went on an 18-2 run, but MHS survived it: Manhattan edged the Lady Vikings in both team’s regular-season finales, 49-42.

With the win, MHS clinched the No. 3 sub-state seed, setting up a third matchup of the season with Topeka High.

Before that, though, Manhattan had business to take care of against Seaman.

It was, in most cliche terms, a tale of two halves: Manhattan raced out to a 30-15 lead at the intermission, but the Vikings came storming back.

Evans-Patterson tallied nine of her game-high 17 points in the third stanza, the quarter that brought the Lady Vikings not only within striking distance, but in position to win the game.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, Manhattan reawoke in the fourth frame. The Lady Indians’ leading scorer in senior Madison Mittie scored her only six points of the game in the period, and and-ones from freshmen Kia Wilson and Garrin Williams only helped further — the latter of which handed the road squad a 41-37 lead with four minutes left.

“Those are big plays,” head coach Scott Mall said. “[Wilson] hit some big free throws tonight, because we kind of struggled. We had some other really good free throw shooters up there, that weren’t able to get them to fall in. So it was nice when those two girls stepped up and got them.”

From there, Manhattan’s aforementioned full-court press continued to dismantle Seaman.

Mittie and junior Gigi McAtee, who led the Lady Indians with 13 points, helped force the Lady Vikings into four turnovers in the fourth quarter, all of which turned into Manhattan points on the other end. The final turnover resulted in a McAtee layup, two points that lifted MHS to a 45-40 lead in the final minute and a half.

Mittie’s 4-for-4 mark at the charity stripe in the final stanza sealed the deal.

Her backcourt cohort in McAtee, though, set the stage for the theatrics with her first-half performance. She canned three first-half triples, the last of which ballooned her team’s advantage to 26-11.

That lead, which peaked at 15, vanished in the third frame.

The only Manhattan basket in the third quarter came from Williams, who stopped the bleeding momentarily with a baseline jumper. Seaman responded, though, with a 10-0 run, and took a 33-32 lead into what turned into a back-and-fourth final eight minutes.

An eight minutes in which Manhattan took the lead for good, that is.

“The girls did a great job [in the fourth quarter] of stopping and containing the ball,” Mall said. “And then setting up a chance for a steal. We had a couple of just huge defensive trips there late to not only stop them from getting a chance, but to get an easy shot ourselves.”

As for Seaman’s mammoth third quarter, Mall pointed to Evans-Patterson and her nine points for an explanation.

“They got down and got the ball into [Evans-Patterson]. We have trouble stopping that, and she’s awfully good at jumping up and catching the ball and then scoring around the basket,” Mall said. “When we tried to help, then they hit some big threes off of that.”

The threes arrived mostly from Tatum Smith, who nailed a triple in each the third and fourth quarters.

But with the victory, Manhattan can turn its attention away from Seaman and onto Topeka High, a club the Lady Indians have beaten once and fallen once to this season.

The Lady Trojans’ Adrianna Henderson was absent from her team’s loss to MHS earlier in the season, though, and Mall plans to search out options in hopes of stopping Henderson, who burned the Lady Indians for 26 points in mid-February.

“We are always working to try something,” Mall said. “We’ll take a look at things; see what we did last time; look at what some other people have done.

“We want to work hard to hold her down as much as we can.”