NORWALK — They blitzed him from all sides, encroaching him en masse, collapsing his pocket. All the while, D.J. Uiagalelei couldn’t stop laughing.

They were St. John Bosco classmates, friends, parents of friends, parents of classmates, little brothers and sisters and maybe some strangers, too. They took turns posing for selfies with Uiagalelei, as if he were a famous statue. Some hugged him. Some just looked in his eyes and yelled, overcome with delight.

They will see Uiagalelei play one more high school football game, one more than any of them could have imagined in the second quarter of this CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship game at Cerritos College Saturday night. At one point the Braves trailed Mater Dei, 28-5. They won, 39-34, and someone asked safety JonJon Vaughns where they could have found such hope. “When you have heart, you have hope,” he said.

Bravehearts, indeed. Talent helps, too.

Uiagalelei will lead the Braves against De La Salle two weekends from now, in a state championship game. After that, his next appearance will be on behalf of Clemson. He looked the part here, with five touchdown passes, no interceptions and 441 yards. At one point the Braves scored 34 consecutive points.

But the defense was the driving force, at least after it gave up two touchdowns in Mater Dei’s first six plays. After that, the Monarchs scored only 20 more points, six in the second half, and even though Bryce Young threw five TD passes of his own, Mater Dei suffered four turnovers, and Bosco’s pass rushers painted Young into a deeper corner with each snap. The Braves held the Monarchs to 139 yards in the second half.

“We couldn’t let Bryce run around like he usually does,” said Nathan Burrell, who had two sacks, blitzed Young into an intentional grounding call in the end zone, which is a safety, and tipped a pass and intercepted it in the fourth quarter.

“He’s more dangerous on the outside than the inside,” Burrell said. “And we started running some games as the game went on, gave their linemen some different looks. They don’t like to move like that.”

“We sat back and tried to control Bryce and make him throw the ball down the field,” said Jason Negro, the Bosco coach. “That’s when we were able to make plays. I think we might have confused him and made him change some things on the line of scrimmage. And we moved Nathan around quite a bit.”

Mater Dei had a final shot when Negro decided to go for fourth-and-1 in his own territory. Uiagalelei tried to sneak it but was stacked up by Tyler Narayan among others. But Ma’a Gaoteote broke free and sacked Young, who fumbled it to Bosco’s Andrew Simpson.

Mater Dei had won its previous three games by a total of 102 points and had failed to win by fewer than 20 points only twice. They also had beaten Bosco 38-24 on Oct. 25. Sometimes you can be too good for your own good, although the Braves weren’t accustomed to contentious fourth quarters either, with only one close win of their own (27-26 at Servite).

“On that last sack we were in the wrong protection,” said Bruce Rollinson, the Monarchs’ coach. “They brought a seventh guy and we didn’t see him. Bryce was great, he made all the calls the whole game. We had opportunities, and when we’ve had opportunities this year we’ve always capitalized. Tonight we didn’t, and that’s high school football.

“We were ahead, and we told them at halftime just to erase everything that had happened. But that’s a good team over there.”

Bosco didn’t let Young or anyone else run, although Mater Dei only rushed 16 times, for 32 yards. “We knew they really wanted to throw the ball, which helped us,” Burrell said.

The other key was removing Kody Epps, who had caught 11 passes for 175 yards in the regular-season victory. Epps caught just one pass Saturday, none in the first half.

“We had to double-team him,” Vaughns said. “Definitely we double-teamed him in the slot, and when he was wide we moved a safety over to that side. Everybody else was on an island. We couldn’t let him hurt us like we did before.

“I told my D-linemen that we were going to give them six seconds. We were going to cover them for six seconds, so y’all go get him (Young). They did a great job, but I thought after halftime our whole offense and defense were rolling.”

Nobody on the field was ready to go home yet. It was a boisterous, somewhat bitter game, but now Braves and Monarchs were chatting in peace. As Vaughns said, many of the players had known each other since youth football. They’ve been in all-star games together, been on the same recruiting trips.

But the magnet was Uiagalelei, greeting all comers like a politician on a rope line.

“We’ve seen him do this so many times before,” Burrell said. “D.J.’s a god.”

His disciples weren’t bad either.

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