SAN RAMON, CALIFORNIA — Quiet and humble by nature, big as a house by DNA. De La Salle’s 6-foot-6, 225-pound senior power forward David Balogun goes about his business with little to no fanfare.

He works. He grinds. He grabs rebounds and loose balls. He powers the ball home from short range.

“I push myself to play hard and I think the rest of the team will play hard too,” he said. “Using my strength. …. using the talent that God has given me, you know, I believe I can dominate the post.”

Balogun did that all and a little extra Saturday night, scoring 25 points and grabbing 12 rebounds to key a throughly dominating 74-44 victory at Dougherty Valley-San Ramon in the East Bay Athletic League playoff title game.

The victory avenged a 59-48 defeat to the Wildcats on the same court a month earlier, and sent the Spartans (25-4) sprinting into next week’s North Coast Section Open Division playoffs. It finished off a dominating week of work for the state’s No. 19 team, which came in hobbling following a startling 67-48 loss at California to close the regular season on Feb. 7.

The Spartans responded with thorough wins over Dublin (54-41), San Ramon Valley (60-51) and Dougherty Valley, teams with combined records of 62-21 to not only take home the league crown, but they’ll be the top seed in the six-team Open division based on the MaxPreps computer rankings, which gives them 37.17 overall points.

That’s well ahead of the next five teams: defending state Open champion Salesian (31.42), San Ramon Valley (30.52), Dublin (29.00), Liberty (27.87) and California (27.59). The decisive loss apparently has knocked Dougherty Valley from an Open spot to the top seed of Division 1, which it is the defending champion.

All that will be ironed on Sunday, but Saturday night, before a jammed packed crowd at Dougherty Valley, of all things that got Balogun going was a three-point make.

After going scoreless in the first, he powered in his first duece early in the second, then canned one from the left corner, which is not part of his normal game.

“When I saw it go in i thought to myself, ‘this is my game, this is my game,’ ” he said flashing a big $-million, but rarely seen grin.

Ironic that it was from the perimeter that Balogun found his groove when he said how the Spartans found theirs is by “getting back to the basics.” That is what swung the score by nearly 40 points in the two meetings with Dougherty Valley, he said.

The team’s top player Alec Blair was maginficient in all areas as usual with 19 points eight rebounds, six assists and excellent defense on Davis-bound wing Jalen Stokes, who led the Wildcats with 13 points, but 19 less than the first meeting.

Bryce Patton added 13 points, including a trio of three-pointers, and Ibrahim Monawar added eight points, three steals, five rebounds and four assists.

“A lot of people get bored with the basics, but that’s what works,” Balogun said. “We don’t want to change our identity. We know what we’re good at doing. … Today we really just focused on discipline and being able to continue what we always do.”

Blair, a long, rangy, athletic 6-6 wing who can get a high percentage shot up every time down, played more facilitator on Saturday. Coming off games of 26 and 32 points, Blair continued to find Balogun down low, especially after the outside shooting of Patton forced the Wildcats to leave their highly effective 2-1-2 Tom Hansen zone.

Balgun made a couple of nifty reverse layups among his 10 buckets.

“When they’re sending three guys at me you gotta be able to do something different,” said Blair, who has signed to the University of Oklahoma to play basketball and base. “I’m blessed to be around amazing players. Today David was fantastic. I found him quite a few times. I don’t know why you would leave him open because he did what he’s supposed to do.”

Blair said the difference between the two games with Dougherty Valley was something much more basic.

“We just played harder,” he said. “We lost couple games in league. It’s just steps in the process and just getting better. We’ve been prepping for these moments, we just played really hard today. I’m happy about our effort and our overall performance.”

De La Salle coach Marcus Schroeder echoed those sentiments, especially on the defensive end, holding Dougherty Valley to a season low by five points.

“Our defensive attention to detail we’ve had all week long has been fantastic,” he said. “(Balogun) was amazing. He stepped up and played so well. He scored inside so efficiently as he has done all year. I’m very proud of him.

“(Blair) has been incredible and he did a great job defensively on Stokes. And he was great in our zone offense attack tonight.

“(Patton) has been shooting the ball well all season but particularly this week. We had great contributions as well from Braddock (Kjellesvig), (Monawar), Brady Orr and Zach Arnold also. It was a very good team win against a great team who is very well coached.”

Besides Stokes, Kenny Cloud added 10 points and Rashod Cotton Jr. had nine for the Wildcats, who made just two two-point baskets (along with eight three-pointers and 16 free throws). To their credit, Dougherty Valley had a couple of major offensive rebounding sequences against the bigger Spartans. The Wildcats simply could not finish.

“That was a butt whooping,” Dougherty Valley coach Mike Hansen said. “But we live to see another day.”

Much like the EBAL, the TCAL Rock championship game was a bloutout as 11 different Salesian players scored, including 16 from Elias Obenyah and 10 by Carlton Perrilliat Jr. Played at the Henry J. Kaiser Center in Oakland as part of Nike’s All-Star Weekend Future Games, in conjunction with the NBA All-Star Game. Salesian improved to 25-2 while St. Mary’s, which had no one score in double figures, enters the NCS playoffs at 21-8. Jaden Jones led the Panthers with nine points.

“I was really pleased with the job we did on defense,” said Salesian Coach Bill Mellis, noting the Pride also held a 37-19 edge on the boards. “We controlled the tempo, shred the ball and really made it difficult for them to score.

“A really good all-around effort.”

This was the first time Mellis or the Pride had played at the Kaiser Center, which was recently refirbished and featured theater lighting, a huge new LED scoreboard and a very cool vanilla colored floor.

“Nike did a good job with the event,” Mellis said. “The kids loved it, the atmospher was great, and everyone seemed to have a good time.”

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