BLOOMFIELD HILLS >> For most of Friday night’s D1 district championship at Marian, Bloomfield Hills stayed on the heels of the hosts, nipping and never letting it get out of reach.

Even in the last few minutes, the Black Hawks were a shot away from making it a single-possession game.

That shot never came, and the Mustangs hung on for a 54-45 victory to claim a district title in front of their home crowd.

“It feels really good,” Marian senior Molly McLeod said. “I think that was my mindset: last year, hosting districts, you’ve got to win at home. That was really important. Ruby (Jansen) and I, we didn’t want our last game on the home court to be a loss. (The district semifinal against) Seaholm was a really good game, too, and our student section showed out big Wednesday, and tonight. That played a big part in it.”

Save for the opening quarter when Marian outscored the Black Hawks 19-12 and it was a relatively even affair. Bloomfield Hills was outscored just 9-8 in the second quarter. Several times in the third quarter, the Black Hawks made it a four-point game.

They just wouldn’t go away.

“It was (Black Hawks senior) Briana Young, man,” Marian head coach Shane Lawal said. “She just kept them in the game; kept rebounding, driving to the basket. “We kept letting her go downhill. The whole point was to put bodies in front of her and we didn’t do the best job of that at the end.”

Finally, it seemed as if Marian had gotten away early in the fourth quarter. Just after Brielle Brooks stroked a trey to cut the lead to seven, McLeod split a pair of free throws, then Ella Swanson connected from deep, giving the Mustangs an 11-point lead with 6:30 remaining.

“That was big,” McLeod said of her teammate’s triple. “We’re always telling her, ‘shoot, shoot, shoot,’ and I’m glad she shot it with that one. She can actually really shoot (laughs), even though she doesn’t shoot it a lot. Yeah, it was scrappy there for a minute.”

Even when the lead extended to 13, Bloomfield Hills refused to pack it in. A steal by Iris Jenney led to a technical and free throws resulting from a clear path foul, then Young converted a three-point play at the line to make it a six-point game with three minutes left.

In the next minute, the Black Hawks had several possessions, including one with multiple shots, to try and get the lead back down to three or four points, but the moment passed when Swanson converted a put-back attempt, and after Bloomfield Hills struck out on a few chances to score again, another Marian junior forward, Kennedi Marsh, put it on the floor, then drew a foul as she made the bucket, extending the lead back to 10 with 1:06 remaining.

McLeod who went to the line a dozen times total, hit all but one of her eight free-throw attempts in the fourth quarter, and they helped put the game away in that final minute.

“Molly hit some big free throws,” Lawal said. “You’ve just got to keep your composure. Nothing ever goes right in a championship game. Nobody wants to lose. They hit some big shots. We had some situations where some big and-1s hurt us, but we stayed with it, got stops and rebounds to put the game away.”

Young, who had an explosive performance to open the playoffs four days prior, had 14 points, and Kaynna Jordan added 11 for Bloomfield Hills (10-12).

“It took us a while to get going,” Black Hawks head coach Renardo Brown said. “We tried a couple things and they broke us down. We picked it up in the second half, but we didn’t really get where we needed to be. We were scrappy, but they were just as scrappy as us, getting a lot of loose balls, making layups, things like that. When we got that thing to six, I thought we were on basket away. Then we got it inside, missed, and they came back and hit a couple shots. I think that broke our back a little bit.”

“We’ve got a lot of young girls coming back, so we’ve got to get in the gym and get back at it.”

McLeod led the way with 21 points for Marian, while sophomore guard McKenley Reid, who hit all 14 of her free-throw attempts in Wednesday’s semifinal victory over the Maples, followed with nine.

The Mustangs were just 5-15 before going on what’s now turned into a five-game winning streak.

“I think (it’s happened by) picking each other up, coaches staying positive, playing with confidence,” McLeod said. “They let us play to our strengths. I think we came in knowing it’s a hard schedule and that we’ll do the best we can. And I don’t care what anyone says, the Catholic League, it’s the best, hardest league in the state.”

After an 11-year streak of district titles was broken last season, the Mustangs will hope Friday was the start of a similar streak under Lawal, who was hired in June.

In Monday’s regional semifinals, Marian will have to go through Detroit Renaissance, who Lawal took to the state final four years ago.

“(My) old team, and it’s a really good team,” Lawal said. “We’ve got to play a perfect game. The coaches have got to scout well, and the players have got to execute even better.”