TROY >> Both admitted it was one of the best hugs ever shared between uncle and nephew.

Just moments after running in the game-winning touchdown in the final tick left on the clock in last Saturday’s 40-35 semifinal win over West Bloomfield, Southfield A&T senior star Isaiah Marshall launched himself into the arms of his uncle and head coach, Aaron Marshall, for a prolonged embrace.

“Yes it is (the best). I’ve never hugged him after a game like that before,” Isaiah Marshall said with a grin.

“We normally don’t do that. That was pretty special. And you know, it’s so funny, I’m happy for him,” Aaron Marshall said. “Everything that he’s getting, he deserves. One of the best kids you ever seen.”

There’s good reason for breaking tradition — or establishing a new one — especially since the Warriors are going someplace they’ve never been before.

That semifinal win sent Southfield A&T on to this weekend’s Division 1 championship game for the first time ever. Southfield A&T (12-1) will face top-ranked Belleville (13-0) at 7 p.m. Sunday night at Ford Field.

“We’re having a lot of fun. I think it’s very cool. You know, do it for my uncle and my dad,” Isaiah Marshall said. “They’ve been around this program for a long time and he never made it this far. So I think that’s a big thing for us.”

The buildup to the Warriors’ first has made it a different sort of a week in Southfield for the Thanksgiving holiday, even if it might be normal to get a bit of indigestion facing a Belleville team on a 38-game win streak, aiming for its third straight title.

“As a coach, I’ve been saying all week, I want to slice that turkey with a smile on my face. I’m going to be able to do that,” Aaron Marshall said. “But honestly man, the mission’s not complete. We know what it is. Now we got Belleville, so we’ve got to get back in the film room. They’ve been No. 1 in the state all year, they’re back to back (champs). So in order to beat a back-to-back team you got to beat them, right? My boys will be prepared. We’ll be ready to go.”

They’ll be facing somewhat of a mirror image.

The Warriors are led by the legs and arm of Isaiah Marshall, a Kansas commit who’s thrown for 2,833 yards and 37 touchdowns, adding 1,373 yards and 15 scores on the ground.

The Tigers are led by one of the highest-ranked recruits in the junior class nationally, quarterback Bryce Underwood, who’s thrown for 2,967 yards and 37 touchdowns, adding six more on the ground.

But the Tigers have scored 647 points on the season (49.8 average) and have allowed just 95 points all season, with five shutouts. Only Saline (14), Davison (21) and River Rouge (28) have posted double-digit point totals against Belleville’s defense, led by Michigan-bound Jeremiah Beasley, among others.

Southfield’s defense posted a pair of shutouts, too, but the Warriors have been in far more down-to-the-wire games, including Saturday’s last-second win over West Bloomfield, avenging their only loss to date (the Lakers won 31-20 in Week 8). A&T’s first four games — vs. Detroit Cass Tech, Clarkston, Harper Woods and Birmingham Groves — were all one-score games.

Some years in the past, this A&T program — and the Southfield and Southfield-Lathrup programs that preceded it — might not have come through in all those situations.

“I think part of it is just our players and our teammates. We have a lot of seniors, so that’s a big thing. We’re very mature, more than last year. We’re more disciplined,” Isaiah Marshall said. “And I just think that in big games, we know how to handle it and we know how to not fold under pressure. So that’s a good thing.”

The Warriors do have 32 seniors on the roster, kids who’ve been aiming at this ending to their prep careers since they were youngsters on the Southfield Falcons.

And it’s finally coming to fruition.

They’re leaving a legacy behind that’s unmatched in program history.

“I mean, they’re literally doing everything that we expected, as you said, but it’s their preparation, and it’s what they do through the week,” Aaron Marshall said. “I know I say that a lot. But only if you knew how dialed in they were in practice, how seriously they take game plans, how seriously they watch film — they watch film as a group more than we watch it with them as coaches. They do it on their own. So, again, this group deserves everything, but it’s because of the work they put they put in and now we’re seeing the reward.”