A little more than two months ago, the Milan High School basketball team walked out of the locker room at Chelsea High School with an 0-4 record and a question mark as to where its season was headed.

On Wednesday the Big Reds walked out of the same locker room with a 55-42 gritty-but-not-so-pretty victory over Skyline in a Class B district semifinal and a berth in Friday's district championship game against Chelsea.

Since the Chelsea Holiday Tournament, in which the Big Reds lost to Pinckney and Northville, Milan has turned its season around, winning its first six Huron League games, 10 of 17 overall, including last week's shocking 30-point win over fifth-ranked (Class C) Dundee.

Now it has a chance Friday to go home with a coveted trophy.

"It's the end of the year so we're going to enjoy it," Milan coach Josh Tropea said after getting a scare from the sophomore-freshmen Eagles, who were playing their seventh varsity contest of the season (6-1). "We survived and moved on.

"We've come a long way and still have a long way to go."

More coverage: This Story on MLive.com | Boxscore | District Bracket

It showed Wednesday. Milan controlled the first half but only led by 10 at halftime thanks in part to Skyline's buzzer-beating 3-pointers at the end of the first quarter (Jordan Woods) and second quarter (Theron Wilson, from about 70 feet).

Near the end of the third quarter Skyline still trailed just 32-30 before Milan's C.J. Luvene drove for two points and sophomore Andre Duffin hit a 3-pointer off an inbounds pass to give the Big Reds a 37-30 lead going into the final eight minutes.

"I liked the energy but we needed to sustain that," Tropea said.

Skyline continued to hang around, however. The Big Reds' poor free throw shooting (10-of-25 in the fourth quarter) contributed. The Eagles trailed Milan 39-35 before the Big Reds went on a 12-0 run starting midway in the fourth quarter to seal the game.

"I felt like we let them hang around all night," Tropea said. "Part of it is we're young and don't have that killer instinct. We didn't take them as seriously as we needed to. "When we've struggled it's we've played half a game or three quarters of a game and we've let teams that don't have the same talent we do hang around on the basketball court," Tropea continued. "I thought we had moved on past that. We've shown we can go 32 minutes, but on Friday we'll have to because we're going to play a very good team on Friday."

Duffin paced Milan with 27 points and six rebounds. Freshman C.J. Turnage contributed 11 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Luvene had 12 points and four assists.

Wilson paced Skyline with 14 points and five rebounds. Jordan Woods added 13 points and Jarrius Mann finished with 11 points and eight rebounds.

"I thought we did five or six nice things in the second half to try and gain some momentum but couldn't get the momentum, couldn't hit the big shot," Skyline coach Mike Lovelace said. "We had a lot of chances to make it close."

Dave Holzman can be reached at daveholz@comcast.net.