Granada beats De La Salle in EBAL championship, possibly securing top seed in NCS baseball playoffs

LIVERMORE — Granada baseball still has something to prove. 

The Matadors are the defending CIF NorCal Division I champions. There was no higher achievement Granada’s 2024 squad could have accomplished.

But that was last year. This season’s Granada team doesn’t have the same eye-popping one-loss record, nor does it boast current Stanford freshman Parker Warner, last year’s Bay Area News Group and East Bay Athletic League player of the year.

Yet this year’s group clearly still has a lot to fall back on. That much was obvious after the Matadors took down De La Salle 5-1 in the EBAL championship held at Granada on Thursday.

The Mats never trailed, constantly threatened and combined strong pitching and defense to earn a no-doubter of a win. De La Salle (22-4) has had a great season, but Granada (21-5) will likely be the North Coast Section’s No. 1 seed when the Division I bracket is released on Sunday.

“This is a big turning point for us,” said senior Fresno State signee Mikey Boyd, who drove in four runs and hit the game-winning two-run double in the third inning. “We beat them early in the year, and we played well. But I feel like today, we played way better. We came out with energy. Pitching was dialed. Hitting, we just drove guys in. Two outs, no outs, one out, didn’t matter. We were gonna drive them in.”

The two East Bay powerhouses have faced off twice this year. Granada won the first meeting 6-2 in Concord on March 13.

This time around, the circumstances seemed primed for a different result. The Spartans had not lost since April 15 and had made a habit of blowing teams out of the water with score lines like 22-0 and 14-0.

But it was Granada pitcher Tyler Kennedy who controlled Thursday’s contest. In 91 pitches, the senior Ohlone College commit posted six brilliant innings, scattering just four hits, one walk and one earned run. He struck out seven De La Salle batters.

“I liked my two-seam a lot,” Kennedy said. “I was throwing that a lot to lefties. I was working changeups too.”

Pitching has been the hallmark of Granada’s recent success against the Spartans. In 2024, the Matadors built a 21-inning playoff scoreless streak against De La Salle thanks to a 14-inning 1-0 win over the Spartans in the NCS championship and a 5-0 victory in their NorCal semifinal rematch. 

The former snapped De La Salle’s eight-season undefeated playoff streak, an indication that a changing of the guard was underway. It’s possible the guard could flip back to green and white in the weeks to come. 

But for now, it’s still adorned in black and gold. The Mats tacked on five more shutout innings on Thursday before De La Salle broke through with an RBI double by Alec Blair in the top of the sixth. 

“Their pitcher was really good,” De La Salle coach David Jeans said. “He’s got a cutter, he’s got a curveball, he threw a change to Blair a couple times. He spotted his fastball away. So he was really good on the mound, and pitching is 90% of the game.” 

Winning the EBAL title was important to Granada. The Matadors set off a boisterous celebration after the final out, one that seemed perhaps overly enthusiastic for a team that accomplished Northern California high school baseball’s loftiest goal last season.

But for this team, which knew how challenging it would be to win NorCal again, this win proved the Matadors have what it takes to get it done. 

“Winning the EBAL is a big deal,” Granada coach Corrigan Willis said. “It always has been, and it always will be. It’s a great league. These guys put a lot of time and effort into their preparation and practice and all that. And so in a game like this, they absolutely want to come out and win. It’s prestigious to win an EBAL title, for sure.”