DETROIT >> When Brother Rice went up against the top talents of Groves in last week’s district championship, it had the star in junior Greg Grays that shined brightest.

Collectively, the Warriors were good in Tuesday’s D1 regional semifinal at Renaissance High School. But the game’s biggest stars wore opposing colors.

Detroit U-D Jesuit seniors David Herron and Xavier Johnson each had big moments in the second half and led the Cubs past the Warriors, 60-58.

After trailing by as many as eight points in the fourth quarter, David Williams split a pair of free throws inside the final three minutes to make it 52-50 Brother Rice, but Herron knocked down his third 3-pointer of the evening with 2:08 left to put the Cubs back ahead.

From that point, Leroy Blyden’s stop-and-pop jumper fell after a Warriors turnover, though Williams got to the line with Rice finally in the bonus and he made both free throws this time to cut it back to one with under a minute remaining.

Forced to extend its pressure, Brother Rice eventually began the process of fouling with 25 seconds left, but Herron proved nearly unflappable.

The Lake Superior State commit made his first set of free throws with 25 seconds left. Trevor Smith, fouled underneath as the Warriors missed a trey, countered with two of his own from the charity stripe, then Herron responded with another made pair with 8.8 ticks to go, making it 59-56.

U-D Jesuit (21-3) chose to foul Logan Hamama with 5.4 seconds on the clock, and he made both his freebies. Herron opened the door for a Warriors’ winning shot when he only made one of his two attempts with 4.1 seconds left, but two Cubs challenged Williams’ pull-up wing 3-pointer from several feet beyond the line that hit iron but didn’t fall just before time expired.

“I’ll tell you what, if you’d told me 32 minutes ago that we would get Dave Williams that shot to win it, I’d have told you we’d take it 100 times out of 100,” Brother Rice head coach Rick Palmer said. “I felt like he was the hot hand, and he’s a senior. He’s earned it, he’s our guy. He’s gotten us here. We’ve got multiple guys that want to take that shot. I had a timeout left, but when he’s coming downhill at full speed, I’m not a good enough coach to get a better shot than that … I’m comfortable with what happened at the end, the ball just didn’t go down.”

In total, Herron missed just one of his eight free-throw attempts on the night and ended with 20 points. On staying calm at the end, he said, “Every time I step in the gym, I make sure to make 50 free throws before I leave. It’s just the work I put in, and I know that I’ve got to step up in the moment to knock it down because I didn’t want my season to end.”It marked an end to a battle that was representative of the fight within the Catholic League’s top division, but one that was more competitive than when the Cubs played and beat Rice by 14 points way back on Dec. 6.

“If the (last shot goes down), we’re celebrating and getting ready to play Wayne Memorial and U-D’s the dejected one, but unfortunately, the way this tournament operates, you don’t know when you’re going to play the good teams,” Palmer said. “We had to play a really good team tonight and somebody had to lose that game, unfortunately.

It was kind of like a normal Catholic League game. I say it all the time, four good teams lose every night in our league when everyone plays. A really good team lost tonight, and a really good team won.”

The better of those good teams in the first half was the Warriors. They led 18-8 early in the second quarter when Grays picked up his second foul, and even when he was forced to sit for several minutes and Herron knocked down several shots from deep, they persevered with balanced scoring. With their lead cut down to three and 2:32 remaining in the first half, senior forward Jeremiah Caffey responded with a triple, followed by a turnover that led to a layup to bump it back to 31-23 within a minute.

Following a back-and-fourth start to the second half, a 3-pointer by Grays made it 38-31, but the lead wilted from there and the momentum shifted drastically. Xavier Johnson threw down a pair of dunks and hit a 3-pointer for seven consecutive points, while Blyden (14 points) had a pair of threes that end-capped a 13-0 run by the Cubs to put them ahead by six.

“I was just taking what the defense gave me, getting stops, letting defense turn into offense and knocking down the open shot,” said Johnson, who finished with a game-high 21 points.

On that spurt where things went wrong for Rice, Palmer said, “I just think they got out in transition more than we want. We talk a lot about transition defense and balanced, and we missed that. A few too many times, guys are going in and trying to make a play on the ball, but it wasn’t the right read. Our guys are trying to make a play, so it’s an aggressive mistake. You want to keep U-D in the half-court as much as possible.”

Able to play through his foul trouble in the first half, Grays picked up his third personal late in the third, then a fourth just 1:30 into the final quarter. But again, it didn’t deter the Warriors, as Williams connected from the perimeter, Caffey finished underneath the basket and Jacob Lamb converted a layup to erase Jesuit’s three-possession lead and knot it up with just over four minutes left.

Three players finished in double figures for Brother Rice as Williams (15 points) was joined by Caffey (12) and Smith (10). Greys finished with nine points and Jacob Lamb chipped in eight.

The Warriors finish the year with a 22-3 record.

“I’m really proud of our seniors,” Palmer said.

“They changed the culture in this program, those three guys (Caffey, Williams, Hamama) in the last three years. It stinks that we lost this game, but when you think about the totality of everything they’ve done, I’m really proud of that group.”

Halted the past three seasons in the regional semis, U-D Jesuit now gets Wayne Memorial in Thursday’s regional final.