Alec Blair, De La Salle advance with gritty NorCal semifinal win; Now get Riordan for California title-game berth

Rested but gimpy, the nation's Top 50 recruit headed to Oklahoma fights off ankle injury, 5-star quarterback Ryder Lyons and red-hot Folsom team to advance to NorCal Open finals

Alec Blair (33) with one of his big high jump shots from the midrange earlier this season against Serra. / Photo: Dennis Lee

BY JOEY ACE

CONCORD, CALIFORNIA — All week, a doctor told De La Salle senior star wing Alec Blair he probably wasn’t going to play in Saturday’s CIF Northern California Open Division semifinal home game against Folsom. 

“I was like, ‘I don’t think you know who you’re talking to,” Blair said. 

It’s not only that the 6-foot-7 wing and fourth-year starter has a scholarship locked up to Oklahoma or that he’s the renowned program’s career scoring leader. It’s just that Blair is a competitor extraordinaire, and more to the point, he adores his teammates and school. 

With the season, and his high school career on the line, it was no time to be nursing anything. 

“We had to get this done,” he said. “It’s win or go home. It’s March Madness and I want to keep playing with my boys. I love this team.” 

Alec Blair was all smiles after De La Salle scored a 74-44 win at Dougherty Valley for the EBAL playoff championship 2-15-2025. / Photo: Mitch Stephens

He didn’t practice all week and he certainly wasn’t 100%, evident by a couple of air balls on free throws. But Blair made all the plays necessary, including a huge three-pointers in the final two minutes to key a 10-0 run to close the game of a 47-38 victory to propel the Spartans (28-4) into the regional finals Tuesday at top-seed Riordan (28-1), a 64-57 winner over Salesian. 

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Blair scored a game-high 14 points, rugged 6-foot-6 senior forward David Balogun added 12 points and 6-6 senior Braddock Kjellesvig contributed 10 points. 

Ahead almost the entire game, the Spartans watched Folsom take a pair of one-point leads, the last with 3:01 remaining on a bucket from top national football quarterback commit Ryder Lyons. 

That’s when Blair told himself, “You know what? It’s go time. I paced myself throughout the entire game so that I could have a quick little burst at the end and help push us over the hump.” 

They got there despite a gallant effort from the Bulldogs (28-4), who won 10 straight coming in and 16 of 17 overall. They got 12 points by Joven Delay, a 6-6 junior wing, and 11 points and 10 rebounds by 6-9 junior Siyahe Siaisai. 

“It wasn’t just me (down the stretch),” Blair said. “Everyone came through. They made so many great and big plays. … We have such a good team. We didn’t play our best, not even close. So I look forward to Tuesday and hopefully we can build on this momentum going into the championship game and we can get it.” 

Ace in the hole: Reporters’s perspective

Joey Ace, covering his first sporting event at De La Salle, gave this account:

One of the most well-known schools for high school sports played host to this open division matchup, as the De La Salle Spartans took on the Bulldogs from Folsom Saturday night. 

The banners full of league, sectional, and state championships from every sport hung on the walls of the gym as the illustrious history of De La Salle watched on.

The big story question mark coming in was whether the Spartans’ all-time leading scorer, Alec Blair, would be 100% after sustaining an ankle injury a week earlier. The senior, who's listed at 6 feet, 7 inches,  came out with his team for warm-ups, putting much of the crowd's mind at ease.

And what a crowd it was; the student section rocked from the moment the teams took the court for layup lines, cheering loudly in equal parts to amp up their team and to throw off the visiting Bulldogs. 

Folsom's plan to slow down the Spartan star was clear from the opening tip, putting physical 6-2, 215-pound junior guard Ryder Lyons as the man to slow down the scoring machine. Lyons may be a standout on the court, but he is better known as a 5-star quarterback, the sixth top recruit in the country by 247Sports for the Class of 2026 and the No. 3 QB. He has 33 college offers. (See this story by Sacramento Bee’s Joe Davidson on why he plays basketball). 

The first points of the game would foreshadow a recurring theme, as David Balogun bullied his way inside for a tough finish in the paint to put De La Salle on the board. The senior forward would finish with 12 points and head coach Marcus Schroeder would praise his second-leading scorer when asked about the performance after the game. 

“He’s awesome,” Schroeder said. “We need to get him the ball more…The best part about him is he cares about the team's success more than anything else.” 

Balogun's constant paint presence was only part of what made this game so physical. 

Blair would test the ankle early when he broke away with a steal up top, putting down a dunk that got the crowd even louder. Despite the early energy, it was clear Blair was not 100% after turning the ball over a few times and being off rhythm in the paint. 

Both sides were pressing hard most of the game and clogging the paint with their biggest and strongest defender, making it difficult for either team to score. The matchup began with a back-and-forth flow until the Balogun-led Spartans ended the first quarter on a 7-0 run, extending it into the second quarter in which they scored the first 4, and it was 18-8 two minutes into the quarter. 

Folsom found its groove the rest of the quarter to slowly but surely crawl back into the game. The Bulldogs, coached by Mike Wall, went on a 10-3 run of their own, led by 6-9 junior Siyahe Siaisiai, who started the run off with a putback off the glass. The first half ended with the Spartans still up, 21-18.

The third quarter was another grind, with Folsom hitting a couple of key 3s to keep the game within one score. De La Salle found their inside strategy slowed with the change of Lyons being matched onto Balogun, causing the paint to be even more difficult to get shots from. 

The third quarter ended with a buzzer-beater from Jovan Duley with a hand in his face, and we had a 31-30 game with the home team protecting a one-point lead. 

The final period showed a level of back-and-forth basketball you’d expect from a playoff, win-or-go-home game of this caliber.

Siaisiaia caught a lob to give Folsom their first lead since the first quarter, with Blair taking the lead back for the Spartans in the very next possession, only for Lyons to crash through the paint and give the Folsom squad the lead with 3 minutes to go. 

But in a game with so many stars, the story coming in turned to the story of the end, when Blair dribbled out the entire shot clock, just to take a contested 3. 

Somewhere NBA announcer Mike Breen could be heard: “BANG!”

That put De La Salle up four with a minute left. The gym exploded. 

The Spartans ended the contest on a 10-0 run, securing a 47-38 victory to punch their ticket to the game at Archbishop Riordan Tuesday. 

Blair led the game with 14 points and afterwards had nothing but good things to say about how he feels going forward. 

“It's win or go home, March Madness. … This place is so special, the team is a brotherhood.”

Blair, of course, acknowledged that the status of his ankle will play into the prep between now and Tuesday's matchup. 

“Ice the ankle that’s first and foremost, get as close to 100% as I can… They tried to say I wouldn't play this week, they must not have known who they were talking to.” 

The two-sport University of Oklahoma commit seemed dead set on giving this run everything he has. 

Coach Schroeder emphasized this team's chemistry when he talked about the team culture. 

“I’m really confident in this group, every guy has put the program before themselves,” he said. “If you’ve got that, you’ve got a powerful thing.”