LOWELL – St. Mary’s girls basketball coach Jeff Newhall said Saturday’s Division 3 North final victory over Stoneham was the most uncomfortable game in which he’s ever coached.”It should be,” he said. “It’s never easy.”St. Mary’s won, 65-53, but for a game in which it was comfortably ahead for most of the game, the outcome never seemed guaranteed until well into the fourth quarter.Click here for a photo gallery.”We’d get up, and they’d make a run to close it a little,” Newhall said. “We were up by 20 in the second quarter, and all of a sudden, they (Stoneham) cut it to nine, and I have a bunch of long faces in the locker room. I actually thought we might be in a little trouble.”Not to worry. After Stoneham pecked away at a 31-11 deficit to get it down to nine (37-28) at the break, St. Mary’s came out on fire ? especially Kirsten Ferrari, who knocked down three three-pointers in the second half en route to a team-high 16.”We were not going to lose this game,” said the senior guard, whose torrid shooting has led her team throughout the state tournament. “We have a bunch of girls in there who have played their hearts out. I was just glad to be able to do something to help the team win. My shot wasn’t always falling, but all you can do is keep trying.”Stoneham never found its rhythm in the first half until late, and got back into it only by sinking all its free throws after getting into bonus.And it wouldn’t have been close were it not for Vanessa Bramante, who scored 14 of her 16 in the first two periods. But Newhall switched Tori Faieta – who got three fouls trying to defend Bramante in the first half – and Cassi Amenta to start the second half, and it paid dividends. Bramante got only two more points the rest of the way.Meanwhile, St. Mary’s opened the third quarter with an 8-0 run on threes by Ferrari and Mucciarone and a bucket by Amenta.”I think,” Newhall said, “that after we came out so strong, all the uncertainty we might have felt evaporated, and we felt like we had the momentum again.”And thanks to the torrid shooting, St. Mary’s built that lead back up to 20 midway through the third quarter (48-28).Still, Stoneham didn’t go away quietly. Another quarter-closing run had the St. Mary’s lead down to 11 (50-39) at the beginning of the fourth quarter.But Ferrari put an end to any hopes of a Stoneham comeback by canning two threes in a row. That was, in effect, the ballgame. Amenta also came up big in the fourth quarter, scoring six of her 15 points.St. Mary’s last won a state title in 2002, but it was Division 4. This is the team’s first Division 3 sectional championship.”Those three-pointers in the second half were a little too much for us to overcome,” Stoneham coach Angela Billings said. “But we played our hearts out.”