High School Sports

Exuberance! San Ramon Valley rallies, beats De La Salle to win EBAL tournament title

CONCORD — Amid the euphoria on the court after San Ramon Valley’s 68-59 victory over De La Salle in the East Bay Athletic League tournament final, Seamus Deely — all 6-foot-5 of him — was barely visible among the masses.

Deely scored 20 points. He pulled down 11 rebounds. He handed out five assists.

Now, it was time to cut loose with teammates and classmates who helped fill De La Salle’s sold-out gymnasium on Saturday night.

“Oh my God, to do something like this, I had never beaten them before,” Deely said. “League rival, with everything on the line, it just feels good, man. I don’t know how the whole winning league thing works. But the thought of hanging a banner in our gym, no matter how small, it hits home.

“It hits home.”

San Ramon Valley (24-5) will go into the North Coast Section playoffs as the EBAL tournament champion and the league’s automatic qualifier. De La Salle is the EBAL regular-season champion after going 9-0 during round-robin play.

No matter the stakes — and let’s be clear, they were pretty high on Saturday — San Ramon Valley will remember this game not just for the triumph but how it triumphed.

De La Salle (24-4) connected with a haymaker in the first quarter, roaring to a 17-4 advantage that had San Ramon Valley wobbling. But the Wolves steadiest themselves and turned the game completely around in the second quarter.

They ended the period on a 22-6 run, capped by Mason Thomas’ 3-pointer as time expired that sent San Ramon Valley floating to the locker room with a 32-27 advantage.

“The energy was insane,” Deely said about Thomas’ shot. “All our boys coming out, supporting us. It feels fantastic. To feel the support from the school, the community, it’s awesome.

“I love it.”

Thomas is quite the story of perseverance for SRV. As a freshman two years ago, he was on the verge of helping the Wolves beat Salesian in the NCS Division I final before going out with a concussion.

Salesian won 49-47.

Last season, Thomas dealt with ankle issues that kept him from contributing to a team that made the NCS Open Division playoffs.

Now healthy, the 5-10 junior guard with fearlessness in his game was another reason SRV ended a six-game losing streak to De La Salle. He scored eight of his 16 points during the second-quarter explosion.

“This is just an amazing feeling,” Thomas said. “Everyone is unselfish. That’s why I think we’re such a good team. We knew what we were coming in for. Preparation was big. They hit their shots. They’re a really good team. But we never once thought it was not winnable — 17-4, we haven’t seen this before. We just fought back.”

The Wolves kept punching coming out of halftime, taking a 42-31 lead on Luke Isaak’s and-one three-point play that forced De La Salle coach Marcus Schroeder to call a timeout.

Alec Blair, De La Salle’s junior star, tried to rally the Spartans. He scored nine of his 19 points in the third period, which ended with De La Salle cutting its deficit to 49-45.

But San Ramon Valley simply wouldn’t be denied down the stretch.

Matthew Diekmann scored 10 of his 12 points in the fourth period, including a four-point play (3-pointer, free throw) that stretched the advantage to 55-47 with 6:22 to play.

“We game out guns blazing, for sure. but they’re a good team,” said Schroeder, whose team won at SRV 60-58 last week. “They just outplayed us. They played harder than us. They made all the big plays. Hustle plays. That’s a credit to them.”

When it ended, SRV players — basketball and many from the school’s football team that lost two heartbreakers to De La Salle last fall — gathered in a tiny locker room around the corner from the gym and did not hold back.

What winning the EBAL title over De La Salle feels and looks like | San Ramon Valley gets it done ⁦@joseph_dycus⁩ ⁦@nathancanilao⁩ ⁦@_SRV_Athletics⁩ ⁦@BasketballSrv⁩ ⁦@SeamusDeely⁩ pic.twitter.com/cZ7xCvc6iq

— Darren Sabedra (@DarrenSabedra) February 11, 2024

They celebrated a championship. They celebrating De La Salle.

“Boy, that second quarter, I can’t say enough about the heart of these guys,” SRV coach Brian Botteen said. “Just how much you have faith in their ability to respond, even in adversity like that. I don’t have words for that.”

Now, both De La Salle and San Ramon Valley will move on to the NCS Open Division playoffs, a six-team bracket reserved for the section’s top teams.

The question for the selection committee to answer on Sunday will be where to seed De La Salle, which hadn’t lost to a Northern California team this season until Saturday, and SRV.

“I don’t know where they want to put us,” Botteen said. “I just know in terms of EBAL, we should be the team at the top right now out of respect. But the other ones are just as good as well. It’s up to them to make that decision.

“I know this: We’re going to have a home game somewhere.”

That, they will.