CIF Open Division: Riordan Tops De La Salle, Advances to State Championship

Riordan won the CIF Northern California Open Division Championship in two five-minute windows.

First came the five minutes the Crusaders spent at halftime shoring up their defense and rebounding. Then came the first five minutes of the third quarter, where they throttled De La Salle with a 19-2 run to take a 16-point lead.

The Spartans never trailed by less than nine points the rest of the way, and Riordan won 52-40 to advance to Saturday night’s CIF Open Division Championship.

The Crusaders will take on Roosevelt at 8 p.m. at Golden 1 Center in California’s final high school basketball game of the 2024-25 season.

Archbishop Riordan boys basketball team | Ethan Kassel photo

“We know how special this group is and how special this school is,” head coach Joey Curtin said. “These guys love being here every day. We’ve had one bad practice, if that, all year.”

Second-seeded De La Salle (28-5) took a 24-23 lead into halftime on Alec Blair’s turnaround elbow jumper just before the buzzer. But the Crusaders had weathered the storm by then, countering an 11-0 Spartan run with their own 8-0 surge.

“We’re a second half team,” said Andrew Hilman. “We had a bad first half, and we were only down one. We knew we were going to adapt.”

Hilman opened the third quarter with a three that ended up putting Riordan (29-1) in front for good. The Crusaders could have suffered a massive blow when Ryder Bush broke a finger on his off hand committing a foul on the next De La Salle possession, but John Tofi Jr. stepped in.

“He’s an energy guy,” Texas A&M commit Jasir Rencher said of Tofi. “He’s giving us what we need.”

Tofi, a Cal linebacker commit who hadn’t reached double figures in back-to-back games during his two years at Riordan, hit a tough turnaround shot over his defender to put his team up four, then sank a three from the right side after both Nes Emeneke and Hilman hit 3-pointers with friendly rolls.

“Everything started clicking after that first shot,” said Tofi, who scored seven of his 10 points in the third quarter. He also scored 10 in Saturday’s win over Salesian.

Emeneke’s deflection led to a Rencher steal and Tofi layup to stretch the lead to 13, and after an Emeneke block that the Spartan bench insisted should have been called a goaltend, Hilman hit his third 3-pointer of the quarter to make it 42-26.

“The way we play and practice, we keep sharing the ball,” Hilman said. “Ryder couldn’t go back in, but he was cheering for us and telling us what he was seeing on the bench.”

Bush, who scored all seven of his points in the first quarter, hopes to play Saturday.

“We played bigger, and even though we didn’t have an extra ball handler, we were ok with that,” Curtin said. “It put the ball in Andrew’s hands more, and it put the ball in Jasir’s hands a little more.”

Hilman scored nine of his team-high 15 points in the third quarter, all on 3-pointers.

The lead stayed at double digits for almost the entirety of the fourth quarter. De La Salle did trail 46-37 after Ibrahim Monawar’s 3-pointer with 3:03 to go, but Rencher wasted little time on the following possession, hitting an elbow jumper that he’s practiced thousands of times instead of running the shot clock down.

“We missed a couple open looks early in the fourth that could have put them away,” Curtin said. “But I was fine with the defensive effort, even though we didn’t score. We knew if we got to 50, we’d be all right, and we got there.”

The turnaround shot was his lone field goal of the night, but Rencher was also a perfect 6-of-6 at the line.

It shouldn’t be the last time he and Blair square off. The two met as freshmen in a NorCal Open quarterfinal, a 57-52 Riordan win, and both are headed to the SEC. Rencher is committed to Texas A&M, while Blair has signed to play both basketball and baseball at Oklahoma.

“He’s a great player,” said Rencher, who scored six of his eight points in the fourth quarter. “We got each other better today.”

Blair scored a game-high 16 points despite being just 10 days removed from a grade 2 high ankle sprain, one that has the 6-foot-7 lefty walking in a boot when he’s not on the court.

“That’s the part that’s gonna stick with me,” Blair said. “I was kind of limping a little bit.”

A bold, confident star who’s become the face of the East Bay power over the last four years, Blair wasn’t shy about his aspirations for the year. Even after winning the EBAL Tournament in a 30-point rout, he continued to insist that his sights were set on winning section and state titles.

“He had a great career,” Curtin said. “I’m happy to say that we got to share the court with him and battle with him.”

He finishes his De La Salle basketball career with one of those two goals met. While he didn’t reach the other, the Spartans appeared in the Northern California Open Division in all four seasons with Blair on the roster. Though Tuesday was their lone NorCal championship appearance in that run, they had come tantalizingly close before, losing by a point in 2023 and at the buzzer last year.

“We did a lot of good things. When we look back at things, we’ll really celebrate it. We broke some barriers. We were playing our best down the stretch because of our team first attitude. I know that sounds cliched, but it’s true,” head coach Marcus Schroeder said. “The California Open Division, I feel, is the best high school tournament in the country, though I know Texas and Florida would have something to say about that. To get to the final four is really good.”

As good as Blair was, secondary scoring was hard for the Spartans to find. Bryce Patton scored 10 of his 13 in the first half, including a bank 3-pointer during the 11-0 run. The only other player with more than three points for De La Salle was Ibrahim Monawar, who scored eight between the final basket of the third quarter and a pair of threes in the fourth.

“We let it get away from us in the third, and they hit some shots,” Schroeder said. “They went to the bigger lineup, and they had more shooting in there. It’s not something they’re totally known for, but they hit threes tonight.”

The Spartans hit nine 3-pointers of their own, but finished the night with just six points in the paint.

“They’re huge at every spot,” Schroeder said. “They can beat Roosevelt.”

Riordan spent much of the fourth quarter playing De La Salle’s game, running out long possessions and milking clock. Patton’s 3-pointer with 3:42 left in the game accounted for the first points of the final period for either team.

“We wanted to slow the game down a little bit with the lead,” Tofi said. “We wanted them out of tempo.”

A year after falling in the NorCal Championship, Riordan has officially surpassed last season’s successes. Now a greater challenge awaits for a team that’s already been crowned as one of the most dominant to ever come from the WCAL, as the Crusaders will try to become just the second Northern California team and the first since Ivan Rabb’s 2014-15 Bishop O’Dowd squad to win the state Open crown.

“It feels amazing,” Tofi said. “Last year ended in a heartbreaker, and we didn’t want to end the season like that again, especially on our home court.”

Tuesday marked the Riordan’s 24th home win in a row. The Crusaders haven’t lost at home since Dec. 2, 2023 against University. Even with a strong De La Salle contingent on hand, it was decidedly a home crowd at the Crusader Forum, with tickets sold out hours before the opening tip-off and open seats difficult to find well before the teams took the floor for warmups.

Saturday’s test will come against a familiar opponent in the Mustangs, out of Eastvale in Riverside County. Led by 5-star recruit Brayden Burries, Roosevelt beat Riordan last year at the Nor Cal Tip-Off Classic.

“The revenge tour continues,” Rencher said. “Being on an NBA court, that’s where I hope to play one day. I can’t wait to be in that environment.”