Jeff Scurran has been in this game so long, he knows when the odds are stacked against him.
And speaking of stacked …
“This is not just a collection of talent — I feel like I’m on safe ground saying this is the best team in terms of talent in the history of our state,” Scurran said of Scottsdale Saguaro, Catalina Foothills’ opponent on Saturday morning in the Class 4A state championship game at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale.
“I’ve heard of seven or eight kids having D-I (scholarship) offers. Let me put this in perspective — if we put together an all-star team in Southern Arizona, we couldn’t get seven or eight D-I players on the field.”
Saguaro teammates Corey Stephens, Jared Poplawski and Kyle Soelle have all verbally committed to Arizona State. Offensive tackle Jax Wacaser is weighing offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Oregon and UCLA, among others. Safety K.J. Jarrell is rated a four-star prospect by Scout.com, will soon choose between ASU, Cal and USC. That doesn’t count the other six players who are weighing offers from various colleges.
The Division I prospect count at Foothills? Two.
Quarterback Rhett Rodriguez is headed to the UA, while lineman Max Michalczik will play at Northern Arizona.
It’s fair to say that the Falcons know what they’re going up against. Saguaro did, after all, blank them 35-0 in Week 2 of the regular season.
Foothills has been mostly on a tear since then, with just one other loss — a 34-7 loss to Salpointe Catholic in Week 9 — slowing them down.
It was then that Scurran challenged his players to take stock of what they hoped for by the end of the year. Since then, the Falcons have scored 53, 35, 52 and 62 points.
“We’ve been playing pretty good, better and better, ever since Salpointe, where we had one of those days — and look, it happens in every sport — where whatever you do is wrong. The whole chemistry was wrong. Dropped passes, misreads in the passing game,” Scurran said. “Sometimes it takes that. People call it a wake-up call, and ever since then, we’ve been on a role and on a mission.”
Scurran stops short of calling it Mission: Impossible, but you know that he just hears that message about self-destructing loud-and-clear.
“First of all, we have to get over the mental thing about what happened last time,” Scurran said. “If you don’t believe, you have no chance. Might as well not even go. But I don’t think that’s a problem for us.”
Scurran, who won three state titles in 12 years at Sabino in the 1990s, knows a thing or two about prepping a team for the grand finale.
Rodriguez should help.
The son of UA coach Rich Rodriguez has been downright remarkable in the playoffs, accounting for nearly 1,100 yards of total offense while scoring 14 touchdowns, eight through the air and six on the ground.
“When you have a guy like Rhett running the show and (linebacker) Brandon Smith on defense, two intelligent kids dedicated to what they do, you’ve got a shot,” Scurran said.
“We have a slogan I’ve lived and coached by: ‘EP-EP,’ Every Player, Every Play. But slogans are easy; finding people who want to live by that, that’s a whole different ballgame and Rhett is that, an every-play kid.”
Scurran’s hoping he can live up the mantra, at least one more time.
