SAN FRANCISCO — In the 75-year history of Riordan’s Crusader Forum, there have been many electric moments. This one might have topped them all.
It was almost poetic in a way.
Five years ago, De La Salle was supposed to visit this storied San Francisco gymnasium for a NorCal playoff game.
The Spartans made the trip across the Bay Bridge from Concord, only to find out there would be no game.
A Riordan student had tested positive for coronavirus, days before the country shut down.
The game was postponed 48 hours, then canceled, with De La Salle advancing in a walkover.
Joey Curtin remembers that heartbreak. There have been a few more for the Riordan basketball coach since that season, which made what unfolded Tuesday night all the more special.
At long last, the San Francisco school is back in a state championship game — its first in 23 years — after the Crusaders took command in the third quarter to beat De La Salle 52-40 for the NorCal Open Division championship.
“We’ve been close,” Curtin said during the celebration. “Just thinking back to 2022, that kind of kick-started our run of dominance in our section. That team kicked it off. A lot of people were here from that team.”
In what might go down as Riordan’s greatest season — which is saying something, given the program’s rich history — the team rose to the occasion on Tuesday when it mattered most.
Down one point at halftime, the Crusaders opened the third quarter on a 19-2 run to send their purple-clad fans into a frenzy and pumped even more juice into the school’s pep band.
De La Salle, which was seeking its first NorCal Open title since 2016, was cooked.
“At halftime, we were playing bad, but we were only down one,” said junior guard Andrew Hilman, who made three 3-pointers in the third quarter and finished with 15 points. “My teammates and I were like, ‘We’re going to get it. We’re going to get it.’”
And get it they did.
Everything went Riordan’s way during the game-turning stretch.
The skyscrapers on the front line blocked anything near the rim, making life miserable for De La Salle players who dared to take the ball inside.
Three-point shots hit every corner of the rim before finding the bottom of the net.
“Credit them,” DLS coach Marcus Schroeder said. “They made a lot of threes. That’s not necessarily what they’re kind of known for. But they hit some threes on us. Again, credit them.”
For De La Salle, the loss snapped the team’s hot streak that included East Bay Athletic League and North Coast Section Open Division titles.
Alec Blair led the Spartans with 16 points but had to overcome the pain caused by a badly sprained ankle. That proved to be too much for the Oklahoma-bound, four-year varsity star.
“Obviously you want to win that game,” said Blair, the last player to leave the locker room. “I thought we had the team to win it. But congratulations to them.”
Blair arrived and left the gym with a medical boot on his right foot.
“It hurt,” he said. “But I love this team. There was never a doubt in my mind. I was hoping we’d play another one. I’d do it one more time. But it is what it is.”
Once Riordan got going, there was no stopping the Crusaders from capturing their fourth regional championship but first in the prestigious Open Division, which the CIF added in 2013.
One year after narrowly falling short of representing NorCal in the Open Division state final, losing to Salesian in the NorCal title game, Riordan cleared the hurdle as it advanced to play Roosevelt-Eastvale for the state championship on Saturday night at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
“This is my last game here, man,” said Riordan senior Jasir Rencher, who is headed to Texas A&M. “That means everything. I don’t know what else to say. It’s taken everything we’ve got. But we still have one more.”
The next one won’t be easy. Never is against the Southern California champion. Only once in the Open Division era has a team from the North prevailed in the Open state final, Bishop O’Dowd 10 years ago.
Less than an hour after Riordan finished off De La Salle, a small crowd gathered on the court to watch the end Roosevelt’s win over Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks on the gymnasium’s video board.
This all-time great Riordan season has a final opponent on the schedule.
“I am feeling great,” Hilman said. “But the job is not done. We need to go to Sacramento and bring it home.”
And if they do, Rencher knows what that’ll mean.
“It’ll mean everything for us to be the best Riordan team in history,” he said. “If we get it done, that’ll secure it.”
