SAN RAMON >> Dougherty Valley coach Mike Hansen tried to explain the unexplainable.

When all seemed lost Thursday night in an epic high school basketball game, his team found an ignitor switch.

What followed was simply stunning.

Trailing San Ramon Valley by 27 points in the third quarter, Dougherty Valley erupted at home behind prolific scorers Ryan Beasley and Connor Sevilla and a defense that would not stop, turning defeat into triumph, sadness into euphoria.

When the visitor’s 3-point shot at the buzzer missed, Dougherty Valley celebrated an 86-83 victory that sent the Wildcats into the East Bay Athletic League tournament final tonight at home against Granada, which beat De La Salle in the other semifinal.

“We’ve got special dudes,” said Hansen, whose team has been ranked No. 1 by the Bay Area News Group for weeks. “Sevilla and Beasley getting cooking, you’re never out of a game. Then we got some stops.”

The USF-bound Beasley finished with 42 points, all but 13 in the second half. The senior had 24 in the fourth quarter when he was 14 for 14 from the foul line.

Sevilla, another senior, scored 29 points, 20 after halftime.

“We’ve got a lot of senior leadership,” Beasley said. “We came out there and gave it all we had. We knew we had to win this league. We had to leave it all on the floor. That’s what we did.”

As if rallying from 27 points behind to win wasn’t enough, Dougherty Valley (24-3) got more good news after Hansen addressed the team in the locker room.

Granada’s overtime win over De La Salle clinched the EBAL title for Dougherty Valley, which benefitted from an unusual format that the athletic directors unanimously approved late last fall to determine the champion of the 10-team league.

Each victory during the league’s nine-game regular season and each round in the league tournament that a team advances — including byes — count as a point.

Dougherty Valley began Thursday with 11 points — eight regular-season wins and three byes.

Granada had eight points — five regular-season wins, one bye, and two wins in the tournament.

San Ramon Valley also had eight points.

So as long as De La Salle did not advance to the final, Dougherty Valley would capture the title Thursday.

When Hansen got the news, he clenched his fists and turned toward a door to celebrate.

The league championship is his program’s first.

“Heart of a champion,” Hansen said. “I kept telling them you’ve got to find a way to fight through this, not knowing what was going on over in Concord. These guys have been tested. Our schedule has been testing them all year. I didn’t think we were going to win, but I thought we’d get back in it.”

Now, Dougherty Valley wants more.

The winner tonight will be the league’s tournament champion.

“We’ve still got to beat them to cut down the nets,” Beasley said. “We’ve got to beat them (tonight).”

A win in the tournament final should also secure the No. 1 seed for Dougherty Valley in the North Coast Section Open Division playoffs that start next week — if it isn’t locked up already.

The way the game Thursday unfolded into the third quarter, Dougherty Valley looked like a team that would have the weekend off.

San Ramon Valley, playing for the third day in a row, scored the first 10 points and kept adding to the advantage. All five Wolves starters scored at least seven points in the first half when SRV (23-6) surged to a 50-31 lead.

“I’m impressed with how locked in we were to start the game,” coach Brian Botteen said. “I mean, 50 points in a half against that team.”

It didn’t get better for Dougherty Valley to start the third quarter as the visitors scored the first eight points of the period to lead 58-31.

After Dougherty Valley broke the dry spell with a basket, Luke Isaak answered at the other end to make it 60-33.

With time becoming a factor, Hansen said he told his starters they had about two more minutes to figure it out before he cleared the bench.

They figured it out.

Dougherty Valley went on a 47-13 run — yes, 47-13 — to take an 80-73 lead with 44.1 seconds left.

The big swing during that wild stretch was a technical foul called against SRV after Beasley drew a foul driving to the basket.

The Dougherty Valley star made all four free throws and then drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the arc.

The seven-point possession cut the margin to 69-63 with 5:39 left.

“Once I hit that three to bring it to within six, I knew we had it,” Beasley said. “The crowd was with us and we started getting stops as well. It wasn’t just scoring. We got stops.”

Even after all that, Dougherty Valley didn’t seal the victory until Isaak’s 3-point attempt bounced off the rim as time expired.

Isaak led SRV with 22 points. The Wolves also got 19 from Mason Thomas, 16 from Seamus Deely and 14 from Parker McClaughry.

But SRV eventually cooled and Dougherty Valley took up residence at the foul line down the stretch.

The Wildcats made 23 of 28 free-throw attempts after halftime.

“Going down 27, we knew the only other option was to keep fighting,” Sevilla said. “We kept chipping away. It says a lot about our team. We’re never going to give up.”