Greg Hansen: Wildcats freshman is the Manu want with Territorial Cup on the line

Think of all the extraordinary quarterbacks who have opposed the UA at Arizona Stadium: John Elway, Troy Aikman, Marcus Mariota, Andrew Luck. Big names. Big lights. Big stars.

On Friday afternoon, Trenton Bourguet played as well or better than any of them. Throw in Rodney Peete, Drew Bledsoe, even Bourguet’s Sun Devil predecessors Jake Plummer and Danny White.

That’s how good Bourguet was in the all-world tension of the Territorial Cup.

And yet Bourguet and his Sun Devils lost, 38-35. Football is not always a fair game.

“We were driving (down the field) like it was nothing,” Bourguet said of the hypersonic second half in which 49 points were scored. “But we’ve got to play better against a team like that, against a faceless opponent.”

Bourguet wasn’t demeaning his hometown Wildcats by referring to them as “faceless,” but it was an ironic use of the word. For the last five years, Arizona has been a faceless entity in not just the Territorial Cup but also college football.

On Friday, the UA’s face came back into focus.

Ever humble, the too-slow, too-short QB from Marana High School praised the Lord six times in his post-game Q&A session, not saying a word about throwing for 376 yards and completing 72% of his passes, coming this close to extending ASU’s “No Pity For the Kitty” streak another year.

And yet twice in the fourth quarter — game on the line, season on the line, everything on the line in the Territorial Cup — an even more undersized, under-the-radar player stole the stage from Bourguet.

Arizona freshman linebacker Jacob Manu, who is starting to make the kind of late-game plays that Tedy Bruschi and Chuck Cecil used to make, twice smacked into Bourguet in the final 3½ minutes, forcing a fumble and an interception and putting his name into the Territorial Cup book of legends.

Manu was the only player on the field who made more meaningful plays than Bourguet.

With 1:26 remaining and ASU speeding toward a winning touchdown — or at least an overtime-forcing field goal — Manu blitzed from the corner and smacked Bourguet’s elbow. The ball fluttered into the hands of UA defensive back Isaiah Taylor.

Game over. Bourguet’s story-for-the-Territorial-Cup ages over.

“I liked the play,” said Bourguet. “We had a one-on-one with their safety.”

And then the 5-foot, 11-inch, 220-pound freshman, who has become a revelation and playmaker since being regularly installed in Arizona’s lineup a month ago, all but turned that “No Pity For The Kitty” billboard on Interstate 10 into ashes.

Said Bourguet: “Twenty years from now we’re all going to forget about this game.”

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Or not. Friday’s victory could be the launching point of Arizona’s return to relevance.

As for the Sun Devils, their future is about as uncertain as Arizona’s was in the winter of 2020 when the school began a search for a new coach and had soon lost 20 consecutive games.

When interim ASU coach Shaun Aguano took a seat in the interview room at Arizona Stadium, he was both emotional and up front.

“This Cup means so much,” he said, his voice cracking. “I want to apologize for not keeping it. … We needed maybe 10 more yards.”

Friday’s game was surely Aguano’s last as ASU’s man at the top. The Sun Devils went 2-7 after losing to Eastern Michigan in late September, a game that triggered the departure of head coach Herm Edwards. When ASU hires a new coach, be it 32-year-old Oregon offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham or a recognizable coach from the retread coaching tree, ASU will start off at the bottom of the Pac-12, next to Colorado.

It’s a place Arizona knows far too well. It is a place Arizona has now vacated.

“I’m a pretty smart guy,” said Aguano. “I didn’t get the job done and this is a ‘win’ business.’”

The next ASU coach probably won’t look at Bourguet and say “we’ve got our quarterback.” In the quarterback business, the 5-11, 185-pound Bourguet is viewed as a step slow, several inches too short and lacking an NFL-power arm.

But as we saw on Friday, Bourguet is a lot like former Arizona basketball point guard T.J. McConnell, whose value goes beyond the numbers and the physical measurables. Bourguet is a “KISS” kind of football player. He keeps it simple. He doesn’t make errors. Because he’s a step slow, he adjusted and absorbed the ASU offense so well that he was usually a step ahead of opposing defenses.

His numbers on Friday were insanely good: 33-of-49 passing for three touchdowns. He all but had a perfect game until Manu rushed into the picture in the final four minutes.

Bourguet said he is aware that the next Sun Devils coach might pursue a new QB in the transfer portal and look elsewhere. If anyone knows what it’s like to battle the odds, it’s Bourguet.

“I didn’t miss a game (at Arizona Stadium) until I was 14,” he said, acknowledging that Arizona was his dream school. “I tried my hardest to come here and walk on. But Rich Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin just told me I was welcome to come here to watch anytime I wanted. I didn’t want to watch; I wanted to play.”

Said Aguano, his coach: “That little sucker takes shots and still makes the passes. He has more than moxie.”

But in the end, you sometimes only get one shot to put your name into the Territorial Cup history books. On Friday, it was Jacob Manu — not Trenton Bourguet — who did so.

Photos: Arizona defeats Arizona State, takes the Territorial Cup