De La Salle coach Justin Alumbaugh was up at 4:30 on Sunday morning watching his team’s most recent matchup against Southern California superpower Mater Dei-Santa Ana.
It was the Open Division state championship game in 2018, and De La Salle had managed to stay competitive into the fourth quarter despite its best player, linebacker/power runner Henry To’oto’o, hobbling on a foot he fractured at practice the previous day.
“Watching Henry limp around was inspiring and sad,” Alumbaugh said about the star who now plays for the Houston Texans.
That De La Salle team, while indisputably an underdog, had enough punch to compete with SoCal’s best. So did the 2019 team that lost in the Open state title game to St. John Bosco-Bellflower.
Alumbaugh is confident this year’s Spartans can do the same.
De La Salle will get its chance when it plays Mater Dei in the Open championship game on Dec. 14 at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. The matchup became official Sunday.
“I have said this and I hope you print this,” Alumbaugh told the Bay Area News Group on Sunday. “I don’t say this all the time. This team could beat anybody in the country. We have a good enough team to legitimately compete with anybody in the country. But we’re going to have to play well.”
The odds are certainly not in De La Salle’s favor. A neutral-field projection by Calpreps’ computer says Mater Dei will rout the Spartans 46-3. But, it should be noted, the same computer picked Mater Dei to crush Bosco 41-13 on Friday in the Southern Section title game. The final was 31-24.
Alumbaugh said his confidence stems from three reasons: His players wanting to play in the highest division, the physical nature of his line and team speed.
“From the beginning of the year, they weren’t talking about Serra. They weren’t talking about St. Francis,” Alumbaugh said. “They were talking about the Open. They wanted this shot.
“The second thing is we have linemen up front that can compete and then, ultimately, it’s rare to say that we match up speed-wise with a Southern California team these days, but we actually do, which is obviously a good problem to have.”
Alumbaugh made the trip to Southern California on Friday to watch Mater Dei’s victory over Bosco. He was joined by some of his assistants and a few players who drove down on their own.
The decision for Alumbaugh to be away from his young family over the holiday weekend wasn’t easy. But in his eyes and his wife’s, too, this year’s team deserved the extra attention to detail as De La Salle aims to capture its first state championship since 2015.
“I was glad I got to see it in person,” Alumbaugh said. “Pretty phenomenal football. There is no doubt. It’s the size. What stood out, and this is a big thing our kids are going to have to adjust to, is the physicality of the game is going to be off the charts.”
So now comes the balancing act for Alumbaugh and his staff.
To have any shot against Mater Dei, De La Salle will have to be physical. But to do that, the Spartans will have to be physical in practice for the next two weeks, a decision that puts players at risk for injury.
The Spartans can’t afford a mishap like that happened to To’oto’o.
“It’s hard,” Alumbaugh said. “You don’t get better at football without playing football. And you don’t stay healthy by playing football. It’s a catch-22.”
Best-case scenario: Alumbaugh gets a chance to make good on a play call that still haunts him now and maybe forever.
Trailing by two touchdowns in the 2019 state game against Bosco, De La Salle had driven to the doorstep of the goal line with about four minutes left. Score there and it’s a seven-point game with time to complete the comeback.
Alumbaugh called “Double Right, 18 Veer” – i.e. a triple option.
“The triple option leaves itself to a potential fumble,” Alumbaugh said Sunday. “I should not have called a triple option there. It was entirely on me.”
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De La Salle fumbled. Bosco defensive end Matthew Jordan scooped up the ball. Ninety-six yards later, the big guy was in the opposite end zone.
Game over.
“We’re on the 1-yard line and I call the worst play of my life,” Alumbaugh said.
The computer forecast says the game against Mater Dei won’t be close enough for a bad play call to have an impact.
But DLS, which will bring an 12-0 record to the field, believes it can prove otherwise.
“Sometimes in these games it feels like you’re showing up to a gun fight with a spoon, so to speak,” Alumbaugh said. “This is not one of those years. We have a good enough team to beat anybody in the country, including Mater Dei.”
