Junior point guard A.J. Mathew is in the middle of a midcourt Huron celebration after the River Rats beat Saginaw Arthur Hill 63-58 in a Class A quarterfinal at Grand Blanc High School on Tuesday night. (Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com)

The Huron High School junior's rebound of a missed Saginaw Arthur Hill 3-point attempt all but clinched the River Rats' Class A quarterfinal victory, and the Lumberjack player that disgustedly threw Baker to the ground knew it.

Baker was smiling before he hit the ground. He was laughing as he got back to his feet. And the Huron fans that packed their half of the Grand Blanc High School gymnasium on Tuesday night roared right back at him as he thrust his arms in the air to celebrate an eventual 63-58 victory.

The River Rats overcame a 10-point fourth quarter deficit and the sensational play of Arthur Hill senior point guard Maurice Jones with their typical team approach, earning the first semifinal berth in school history in the process.

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"They've got two stars over there. They have a pair of aces," Huron coach Waleed Samaha said of Arthur Hill, throwing 6-foot-8 sophomore Jordan Hare into the mix with the Southern California-bound Jones.

"But we've got a full house. I'm not a card player, but I know a full house beats a pair of aces. That's our mentality every time we take the floor. We don't care who their best player is. We know that, as a team, we can beat anybody. And that's what we did."

The River Rats got big contributions from numerous players all night long, but the final 40 seconds of the high-energy game belonged to Baker.

With Huron leading 56-55, the 6-foot-4 post player blocked a Jones drive, gathered the loose ball and was fouled. He rattled in a pair of free throws for a 58-55 lead with 35.8 seconds left.

Baker then rebounded two errant 3-point attempts on Arthur Hill's next two possessions. A perfect outlet pass to a streaking Jalen Bouma (12 points) led to a fast break basket for a 60-55 lead and his two free throws with 10.2 seconds left put the game away.

The River Rats will play Southfield in Friday's 1 p.m. Class A semifinal at the Breslin Center in East Lansing. Southfield, led by class of 2011 University of Michigan commitment Carlton Brundidge, beat Warren DeLaSalle 67-57 on Tuesday.

"Great players make great plays, and A.J. (Mathew) and Kyle have been the best players on the team," said Huron junior Dante Williams, who scored 14 points. "They kept the team together. They're leaders on the floor."

Mathew, who scored a team-high 17 points, put Huron ahead 56-55 with a 3-point basket with 2:05 to play. Just four minutes earlier, the River Rats took a quick timeout when Arthur Hill scored the first six points of the fourth quarter to take a 50-40 lead.

"Nobody came to the bench panicking," Mathew said of the timeout. "Everybody was still on the same page. We knew we could still pull it out."

That's because Samaha, who claims not to be a gambler, still had a card up his sleeve.

Huron's 6-foot-6 Dante Williams guards Arthur Hill's 5-foot-6 Maurice Jones during the River Rats' Class A quarterfinal win. Jones finished with a game-high 32 points. (Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com)

Huron finally unleashed the full-court pressure defense it had played all season after that timeout and promptly went on a 9-0 run to get back into the game.

"They don't know what's about to hit them because we've been zoning them all night," Samaha said he told his players in the huddle. "I looked at the kids and said this is the defining moment. This is what we talked about coming in here tonight. Let's show these guys who we really are."

Huron had actually made a pretty good statement early in the game, leading throughout the first quarter and extending the advantage to as much as 11 points, 24-13, early in the second quarter.

At that point, however, Jones had four points on1-of-7 from the floor.

The 5-foot-6 guard scored 11 of his team's 13 points over the final four minutes of the half to pull the Lumberjacks to within 33-29 at halftime. He finished with a game-high 32 points on 10-of-29 shooting.

Arthur Hill took its first lead of the game midway through the third quarter before looking like it would pull away early in the fourth.

"We knew we had something left to come back with," Baker said. "We just started making a run, went back to our press and everything started to happen."

Instead, it was Arthur Hill that appeared rattled.

"(Jones) made some great plays finding people, we just didn't finish," said Arthur Hill coach Greg McMath, whose team didn't make a basket over the final four minutes, until Jones buried a meaningless 3-pointer at the buzzer. "We missed four layups, some free throws. We had a chance to put them away, we just didn't."