A month after the start of the college football season, Pima College is more than excited to finally play the home opener Saturday against Scottsdale.
The Aztecs are riding a two-game winning streak and coming off a three-game road trip, broken up by a bye week, while the Artichokes are undefeated at 4-0.
Pima coach Jim Monaco said the team isn’t scared to go up against the No. 4-ranked team, but they know they can’t have any mistakes if they want to win.
“If we can go in there and continue to hang with them, keep the offense clicking and the defensive line moving, we’ve got as good a chance at beating anybody,” Monaco said.
The offense saw a surge of power last week at Phoenix in freshman quarterback Brooks Ringer, who went 22 of 30 passing for 457 yards. The Utah native threw five touchdown passes and had one rushing score.
The standout performance was good enough for a NJCAA football offensive player of the week and ACCAC football player of the week recognitions.
“It’s great, but if I were to say it were done all by me, I’d be a fool,” Ringer said. “Just because my name is on the National Player of the Week, that doesn’t really account for how well my offensive line or my receivers played.”
WORKING OUT THE KINKS
The Aztecs had a bit of a rough start to the season.
After traveling to Eastern Arizona College, the Pima offense struggled to work together. Rainy conditions made things worse — and even delayed the game 90 minutes in the fourth quarter.
Eastern shut out Pima 21-0.
But here’s the kicker: Eastern was only able to score due to Pima’s mistakes.
The Gila Monsters got on the board in the second quarter due to a Pima fumble recovery that was returned for a touchdown, then converted on an Aztecs turnover on a kickoff a few minutes later.
The last score came in the fourth quarter due to a Pima interception.
“We basically just kept shooting each other in the foot,” sophomore center Tyler Wells said. “Nobody was playing together, everyone was playing individualistically.”
When the Pima schedule was released, Monaco wasn’t very happy about having a bye in Week 2. It didn’t make sense to have a staggered start to the season.
But it ended up being just what the team needed after the opening loss.
It allowed the team to regroup and slow things down. It will still be tough to play nine straight games — there’s already a few players hurting — but the timing of the bye week served as a way to turn the team around for Glendale and Phoenix.
“Is it going to be maybe a little detrimental at the end? Maybe,” Monaco said. “But it is what it is. We’re going to battle through it.”
However, it will be a nice change of pace to play at home four of the next five weeks.
“It feels great. To have two at home and then go to Mesa — which is a tough place for us, always been,” Monaco said. “We’ve got a long road to go. We have to take it one game at a time.”
