Source: MI Prep Zone

Author: Matthew Mowery

DETROIT >> After falling short two straight years, this big group of Farmington Hills Mercy players finally got to experience the joy of winning a Catholic League title, winning Sunday’s title game at Wayne State, 45-36, over rival Birmingham Marian.

“We’re proud that we won the Central Division for the second year in a row, and we got to this game again, and obviously it feels better to win it today,” said Mercy coach Gary Morris, who’s guided the Marlins to the last three of their seven total Catholic League titles, and the third since 2010-11. “Certainly it was a goal of ours to win the Catholic League.”

After Mercy won it in 2014-15, on Taylor Jones’ last-second shot — none of the current seniors were on that team — they’d get bounced in the semifinals the next season, then lose in the finals last season.

This time, they got to the ones celebrating with the banner and the big trophy.

“Yeah, it is the moment, because we hadn’t won in three years. We just said before the game, we knew we could win, because we’d beat them two times already,” said Chloe Godbold, who had a game-high 19 in the win. “The feeling when coach — ooooohhh — when coach hands you that trophy … it’s great, just great.”

The Marlins (17-2) have won 13 straight. They’ll now host No. 1-ranked Detroit King, the Detroit Public School League champion, for Operation Friendship at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Marian (14-5) will take on Detroit Mumford in the first game, at 5 p.m.

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Sunday’s outcome wasn't a foregone conclusion, though, since Mercy had beaten Marian by a total of four points in divisional play.

“If we’d beaten them by 20 each time, but when you’ve beaten them by one and three, you know that it’s going to be a battle, and it certainly was. Really proud of the kids. We knew there were going to be moments in the game where things didn’t go our way, but overall a lot of things did,” said Morris, who may have sweated through his warmup jacket, given then nip-and-tuck nature of the game. “These always, they’re always a battle. This gym felt like it was 150 degrees. I think I’m overdressed.”

The game was within a possession or two for nearly the entirety of the first half, but Mercy began to pull away a bit in the third quarter, getting the lead to five points twice, but no more.

Mercy finally moved the lead to seven when Godbold canned a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, finally giving the Marlins some breathing room.

“I felt as though we needed some more points from our offense to secure the win. My shot was in rhythm, so all I did was catch and shoot it, and it went in,” Godbold said.

Marian turned up the defensive pressure, but Mercy handled it better than they had all season long.

“This was the best we’ve done against their pressure. In the first two games — I mean, they missed a lot of shots in the first two games, and we had too many turnovers. I thought we took much better care of the basketball today,” Morris said. “You know. Our kids know them, and know it’s going to be tough. You wonder what adjustments they’re going to make. We made some adjustments on our press-breakers. And I thought they paid off today. You kind of figure there’s going to be — you know them well, they know you well, but yeah, there’s going to be some little tweaks, here and there, and you’ve gotta adjust during the game.”

It helped the Marlins that Marian had only committed one second-half foul through the first half of the fourth quarter, meaning that if they were going to trade fouls for extra possessions, it would take a while to actually get to the bonus.

“I’d say yes and no on that. It allowed them to be super-aggressive, and double-team us aggressively, because they weren’t worried about fouls, because we weren’t in the bonus. But, yeah, it did obviously allow us to keep the ball on offense for a long time,” Morris said. “We know a Marian team is going to fight right to the end.

“Obviously, you’d like to be ahead rather than behind — I liked where we were at. And then I thought when we were up six, Katie Coe made the first free throw, then got the violation, I thought that was big, because she made the second one fortunately, which made it a three-possession game. I thought toward the end we really did get out and defend them well. We didn’t give them easy looks those last couple of minutes.”

Lauren Montalbano led Marian with 12 points, while Olivia Moore had 10. Those two accounted for all six of Marian’s points in a sluggish fourth quarter.

Last Updated: 2/19/2017 8:39:50 PM EST