ArizonaVarsity Top 10 Rankings: 2A (8/30/2022)


Willcox beating the brakes off of Gilbert Christian caused a rankings shake-up this week, and while stats haven't been uploaded yet, I was able to find a link to watch a replay of the game. (Check it out for a wildly unsafe fireworks display at the 41:30 mark) Cristian Pando had himself a game, setting the tone early with a first quarter TD, and defensively, Gilbert Christian had no answer for 6-4, 230-lb Willcox DL Darrek Lee, and FRESHMAN Christian Teeters had a fourth down sack that really impressed me. Up 13-0, sophomore Remington Todd took a ball right out of a receivers' hands for an interception, and Aidan Fuentes scored his second consecutive TD (He had 3 on the day) to make the game 20-0 at the half. Gilbert Christian closed the gap to 26-14 toward the end of the third quarter, but Willcox responded with a near 8-minute Pando TD drive to slam the door shut on any chance of a comeback.

If I had to give anyone on Willcox some pub that hadn't previously been mentioned, Willcox DL Mikey Martinez and LB David Allred are fantastic passrushers on a loaded 2A defense.

Also a bit of a surprise is San Tan Charter sitting at 2-0. After letting last year's coach (Kerry Taylor) go, some might be surprised to see STC have early success.

New to the top 10 this week are Miami, who defeated Chandler Prep, and Sequoia Pathway, who got two fumble recoveries from Kyrese Banks and three rushing TDs from Kevin McIntosh in a blowout over Veritas Prep.

Maintaining the top 3 spots are Pima, Scottsdale Prep, and Morenci.

CTown Rivals Podcast: Season 10, Episode 1

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Showing some love to the PXU this week and heading out to Central to see the 5-1 Bobcats against Fairfax. Central is ranked No. 13 in the 5A right now and needs to win out to make the playoffs for the first time since 2009 (8-2 won't cut it).

Fairfax is 3-3 and has played four straight games decided by 1 or 2 points! They've split those, so the Stampede is thisclose to being 5-1. . . . of course that means BFHS is also close to being 1-5. The Stampede have a balanced offense scoring 9 touchdowns rushing (7 from senior Andre Branch) and 7 passing (behind senior QB Anthony Escobedo).

Central brings the aerial show of a pass game averaging 268 yards per game led by senior Dom Bagchi. He has 20 TD passes (with just 2 INTs) and has completed 65 percent of his throws. 13 of those touchdowns have been caught by Kohnor Roque-Brown (7) and Breon Ballard (6). I went to Central last year, but Bagchi was out with an injury.

Fairfax is the newest of the 10 Phoenix Union high schools (opened in 2007 and played first varsity season in 2009) and the Stampede has never lost to Central (7-0 all-time). However, this is the Bobcats' best team during that time.

Central sits No. 13 and is helped by its win over No. 14 Paradise Valley (also 5-1). The Trojans continuing to win will help CHS. The remaining schedule after #33 Fairfax is Maricopa (#42), McClintock (#29) and Camelback (#20). Central is only 0.83 ahead of #17 Sunnyslope, who has a couple tough games remaining. It would be disastrous if Central missed the playoffs at 9-1 and if that happens, I hope there is a move to reward region champions with playoff spots once again. The Bobcats' loss was to Casa Grande, which is currently #15.

I know the top-4 but that is really it--I got this list from a 3A head coach who knows his league well..

The birth of the Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout....

I am writing this blog to help people understand what high school and junior college basketball are like- mostly for those who are considering making a career of coaching it. This seems like the right forum for that. If I can influence one person in some way in their career choice, that's great. I have tremendous respect for coaches.

Over the summer of 2010, and into the fall, we brainstormed about possible sponsors for our new holiday tournament. It finally dawned on me that earlier in my career, while I was coaching at Camelback High School, we had proposed to the Fiesta Bowl organization a revival of their Compadre Classic, which had been held for many years at Chandler High School before dying out. Our proposal had gone so far as to having a meeting with the bowl committee at their headquarters office in Tempe. At that time, the spring of 1997, the committee and organization was led by John Junker. We came to the meeting with a slick pamphlet for each member and made a good enough impression on them that they approved the idea. It would start in December, 1997 and be held at Camelback High School. In those years, the Metro Conference was still very powerful, so the idea of four inner city schools competing against four teams from out of state had a strong appeal to the Fiesta Bowl people, who, thanks to an influx of money from their highly successful bowl game, were looking for exactly that kind of charitable sporting event. Then there was a problem…I left for a new position at Mountain Pointe High School.

Why would that be a problem, you say? Just bring your tournament with you, right? Well, Mountain Pointe High School already had a working agreement with the Fiesta Bowl to host one of the bowl participants annually as a practice facility. That meant all locker rooms were off limits right during the time when we would be having the basketball tournament. It never occurred to me to ask a sister school out in Tempe to host our tournament, and McClintock with head coach Doc Zinke evidently had a pretty good one going out there anyway. So, the Fiesta Bowl idea was dropped.

Fast forward to 2010, sitting in the office with the coaches at MCC. It just popped into my head- John Junker was still in charge of the Fiesta Bowl organization, which had grown even bigger and more powerful over the ensuing years. Tragically, that would change forever not long after, but not yet on that day. I told the guys the story of our meeting with the Fiesta Bowl and how much they liked our idea back in 1997- perhaps they would like the idea of a junior college tournament aimed at the very best NJCAA Division 1 junior colleges in the country. I called and they were interested. John Junker and a few other people actually came over to MCC to talk with us about it. This began a very important relationship, financial and otherwise, with the Fiesta Bowl organization that would last the entire length of my career at Mesa. Within a few short years, we had the best teams in the country coming to what was considered the second best junior college tournament in the nation, outside of the national D1 tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas. There were several times when one of teams in the tournament would go on to win the national title, and there were some other times when the eventual national champion would lose in the Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout.

Several times, undefeated teams would arrive for the tournament. During one tournament, number 1 ranked Monroe College of New York came in at 13-0 and left at 13-3. Their coach swore to us that he would never return, but competition and vanity overtook him, and he returned at 13-0 again in 2013, only to be beaten by the Mesa Community College Thunderbirds in the championship game of that edition. The last tournament to be held had the number 1, 2, and 5 teams in the NJCAA D1 rankings in it. Can you imagine if Arizona State held such a tournament annually at their level? It would be widely publicized and attended. The Maui Invitational comes to mind as something comparable. But this was junior college- so there was absolutely no media attention and you would never know that we actually won the tournament twice- in 2011, defeating Three Rivers, Missouri, who had the winningest coach in NJCAA history- Gene Bess; and the aforementioned 2013 victory over Monroe. Think about it- we were 1-0 against the winningest coach in history and 1-0 against the winningest junior college program in history (Moberly)!

The 2010-2011 team was a tale of two seasons. We got off to a good start by winning two games in Utah against Snow College and nationally ranked Salt Lake City. Then, about a third of the way into the schedule, we lost both of our point guards to injury. These were two really good players- Travis Timmons from Tucson, and John Balwigaire from California.

Gotta stop right here and mention these two guys. Mike Grothaus and I came into the office one day during that first season of 2008-09, and checked the phone messages like we always did. One came up from Dan Munson, the head coach at Long Beach State. It was a very long message where Dan told us about a kid he had signed who was a great player and person. He went on and on about his family and his high school career, and Mike and I were just looking at each other like “great story- what does this have to do with us?” After several minutes, Dan said that the kid turned out to be ineligible and had become so depressed that he moved out of his house and went to live with his aunt in Arizona. And he had enrolled at Mesa Community College. Dan said we should find him. His name was John Balwigaire. We agreed immediately. And then we found him, and he was all Dan said and more. He spent almost three years with us, was a great player- a better person- got a D1 scholarship to Wright State, and is now an assistant coach at the college level.

Travis Timmons enrolled in our walk-on class, but didn’t make our 2010 team, which was loaded. He was a guard out of Tucson. Mike Grothaus, who ran the walk-on class really liked Travis and told him to come back in the spring when we would start building our 2011 team. A lot of guys wouldn’t have done that, especially these days, but Travis came to most of our games, and then was there in the spring. He became our point guard for the next two seasons, went on to Southeastern Oklahoma State, and is now, like John, a college assistant. I cherish the friendship that I have with these two young men to this day, which is the best part of coaching.

You know what they say- you can’t win without good guard play, and that was certainly true for the next nine games without John and Travis. We lost them all. I had never been through that as a player or coach. We had no one who we believed could be a point forward, and we were big up front, but not overly skilled there. We had a freshman shooting guard, Jeff Coon, from Las Vegas, who was exactly that- a shooting guard. He was not a point guard nor a combo guard in any sense of the words. He got pressed into service to try and run the team, but it was tough for him. He was a great kid, but those nine games were a disaster for him. Teams in conference knew that we were in trouble and pressured Jeff and our forwards mercilessly.

We used a rating system for scoring how players did in games. A lot of coaches do, and it can be a good tool for pinpointing things that individual players needed to work on, as well as highlighting team needs. If a player scored anywhere from a +5 to a -5 in a particular game, that was considered an average score. A +6 to a +15 was a good game score, and above +16 was an excellent effort. In the other direction, a -6 to a -15 was considered a bad game score, and a -16 or lower was gradually more awful. In one of the games, Jeff Coon scored a -36. After the film session where we scored the game, as the lights in the room came back on, Jeff said “other than that, how was I?” Like I said, he was a great kid.

We did get both guards back near the end of the season, but the nine league losses had put us in a perilous position for making the playoffs. We would have to win our last three games to get in, and the last one would be against the #1 Division 2 team in the nation- South Mountain Community College at their place. We won the first two and then headed over to face the Cougars and their star player, Michael Craig. We won that one, too, and then had to face our nemesis- Arizona Western in the first round of the conference playoffs in Yuma. We literally led the entire game- by as many as 11 in the second half until the last three seconds- losing by one. We ended up having a losing record, 13-18, but were actually better than that. I know a lot of coaches say that, but we really were. Look up John Wooden's definition of success. This team fit.

Next time: Another big run begins...

I’m bringing back the student section power rankings! I had a lot of fun with this last year and I think it’s a good way to keep all the schools involved. I’ve talked with some of my fellow media members some of whom are on here and asked them to give me the best they’ve seen so far this year… Here’s the top ten so far 👀

1. Basha “Bear Den” (Defending Champs) @bashabearden
2. Liberty “Uproar” @libertyuproar
3. Perry “Hype Squad” @perrypuma_pit
4. Hamilton “Dawg Pound”@DawgPound2023
5. Mountain Ridge “Ridge Army” @Ridge_Army
6. O’Connor “The Nest”
7. Corona Del Sol “The Tribe”
8. Chaparral “The Birdcage”
9. Horizon “The Dawg Pound”
10. Notre Dame Prep *Didn’t get the official name*

We might as well talk about it

This week brings a chance to look at how far Pinnacle has come in the past 2 years. The Pioneers (4-1) play at Chaparral (3-3) on Friday in Scottsdale. In 2020, I was at the season finale of the COVID-shortened season (also at Chap). Pinnacle lost on that night, 52-10 to finish at 3-4 and miss the 6A playoffs (only 8 teams went that year). Chaparral was 3-2 and made the playoffs. The Firebirds went on to win the '20 title (6A) and return to the championship the next year.

A total of 6 Pinnacle players, who were sophomores, suited up for that game and made the box score (not sure how many O-Linemen there were, but Elijah Paige was probably one of them). One of the sophomores was Devon Dampier, who is of course, now at Saguaro. The others?

Running back Jacobie Rucker and receivers Duce Robinson & Myles Libman. Rucker has 4 rushing TDs this year while Robinson (511 yards, 8 TDs) and Libman (366 yards, 4 TDs) are probably the best WR tandem in the state. On defense, Jadeim Birthwright and Coleson Arends (who is now mostly used as a TE) were on that Pioneer team.

Pinnacle is ranked No. 5 in the first Open ratings, which came as a surprise to many. The Pioneers have beaten El Camino (who is 5-2), Queen Creek (by 26), Horizon (by 35), and Valley Vista (by 48). The lone loss is to #1 Liberty. After this one, PHS still has Brophy before finishing with Highland, Saguaro, and Centennial. Can the Pioneers make the Open at 8-2?

Chaparral has had closer games with 4 of its 6 being decided by 4 or fewer points. The wins came against Salpointe & Queen Creek while the losses were to Desert Mountain & Mountain View. The Firebirds have an impressive win over Mountain Pointe (31-13), but a loss to Williams Field when Dylan Lee ran for 518 yards. CHS is ranked #8 in the first 6A rankings, so should remain in a good position to make another playoff run.

In addition to the 2020 loss to Chaparral, Pinnacle saw its season end in '21 in the quarterfinals against the Firebirds (41-36), so there is a revenge factor at play.

Here we go again.

Already know of 3 job openings!
I think--

I think WF was just an interim job

Over under normally at 25ish.

The first championship...

Stephen Rogers was a 6’8’ wing with superb skills, who had played on a great Mesa Mountain View state championship team in 2005. Stephen had signed with the University of San Diego and then gone on an LDS church mission for two years. While he was gone, USD had fired their coach and the new staff did not seem as interested in Stephen as the old staff was. That was incredible, because Stephen was a player- a big time player. He then ended up at Arizona State University, who had tried to recruit him out of high school. They characterized Stephen as “soft”, but Mike Grothaus had played some city league with him and said that he was anything but soft. ASU decided to redshirt him for a year, and Stephen became disenchanted with that program. Mike had gotten to know him and immediately pitched the idea of coming to Mesa. It turned out that Salt Lake City Community College had gotten wind of Stephen’s desire to leave, and they also got into the mix. SLCC is a perennial top ten Division 1 junior college program, who could offer a full ride that included room and board. Mike was relentless and eventually Stephen committed to us.

Even though we had a strong returning group and now had Stephen Rogers, we were picked to finish 7th in the coach’s poll. More locker room material. We opened the season in, of all places, Salt Lake City. We beat Snow College the first night, then lost to Salt Lake the next night. I know some of their coaches were looking at Stephen like “dude, you should have come here.”

Stephen was definitely a difference maker. In only our second year, we beat Arizona Western all three times we played them, and went 25-7 overall while playing an all D1 non-conference schedule, which included going 19-3 in the ACCAC. We lost to Cochise College twice by one point during the regular season, but beat them 72-69 at their place for the Region 1 championship. That was Mesa’s first region championship in men’s basketball since the splitting of the colleges into divisions- about twenty years earlier. The long bus ride back from Douglas was one of the most memorable things in my coaching career. In the old pre-division days, that victory in the championship game would have been good enough to earn a trip to the National Tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas. I really felt like we had a team that was strong enough to contend for the national championship. Since the Arizona league had six Division 2 teams in it, the NJCAA would no longer offer a bid to go straight there from the region tournament. We had to go through Region 18- which had teams from Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. It was a very strong region.

Three days after beating Cochise, we were tasked with going to Salt Lake City to play their region championship team, which was the College of Eastern Utah. I remember walking in to the gym at SLCC and seeing the Salt Lake CC coaches, who had earlier questioned his decision to go to MCC. Stephen Rogers walked by them kind of looking proud to be a T-Bird. Eastern Utah was coached by Chris Craig, which is another whole story in itself; and had the nation’s leading rebounder in Michael Glover. Glover would go on to Iona University, where he led the NCAA D1 in rebounding. Their entire front line were NCAA Division 1 commits, so we knew this was going to be tough. It was a great game, but we lost by one point in overtime, which was devastating. If this was the NCAA, we would have gone on as an at-large pick, but that's what makes the NJCAA D1 tournament so hard to win. This had been such a fun team to coach, and they would never be together again. CEU went on to reach the national semi-finals in Hutchinson, and was actually leading Howard College of Texas by 16 with 4:30 left in the game. I was watching the game back in my office in Mesa and saw Howard put on the obligatory, down 16 press, and then sat amazed as CEU self-destructed and lost. This was followed a few months later by Chris Craig self-destructing, which made a big story in Sports Illustrated.

There were other side notes from that 2009-10 season. One of the goals that we had coming in the door was to resurrect the old Mesa Rotary Shootout, which for a time, had been the best junior college holiday tournament in the nation. We went to the Rotarians in Mesa and made a pitch, but evidently they had ended their relationship with MCC on bad terms and were really not interested in our pitch about tradition. We plunged ahead anyway and put together a tournament that year which did not have a major sponsor. MCC did not pay for these types of tournaments- they just let us use our gym. We had to come up with money for all tournament costs, including room guarantees for the out of state participants, which proved to be substantial and a major headache. It was obvious that we were going to have to find a major sponsor for this event if it was going to continue. We would. More on that later.

Also, Stephen Rogers was named the conference player of the year, as well as becoming a Division 1 All-American. He was technically a freshman, but was being actively recruited by every major conference in the country. ASU never contacted us about him- I guess he was still too soft for them. There was a glimmer of hope that he liked us coaches so much that he would return to Mesa, where we gave him an unbelievable $325 per semester, but that was crushed when BYU came calling. BYU had an excellent team with a great player named Jimmer Fredette, and it turned out that Stephen’s father had been the one to convert the Fredette family to the LDS church when he was on his mission in New York. So, Stephen got to play with Jimmer and was a starter on a team that reached the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. But, we were blessed to have gotten to know Stephen and his family, and being able to be around him as a player was amazing, as was the whole 2010 team. I’ll never forget walking with Stephen’s Mom through our gym lobby one day and she said to me “you guys must not have much pride in your athletic program”. She was referring to our trophy case, which, in fact, was a mess. There was massive dust, people had tucked candy wrappers into some of the openings, some trophies were either knocked over or broken, and some of the neon lights were flickering or out completely. To be honest, it was one of those things that we expected someone else to be in charge of, so we just kind of left it alone. After the season, I spent part of everyday for almost a month fixing it up. Eventually, the school completely overhauled it, so perhaps there will be no repeat of Mrs. Roger’s comment.

Another side note from 2010, was that as conference coach of the year, I was tabbed to be the head coach the Arizona team in the first (and only) Arizona vs. the United States junior college all star game in Las Vegas. The game would be held at the Orleans Arena in conjunction with the Nike Basketball Coaches Clinic, which was the largest coaches clinic in the world at the time. Our team and MCC coaches were also invited to the NJCAA Coaches Hall of Fame banquet at the same venue. Now, I’m not sure who came up with the idea of pitting Arizona’s all star team against the rest of the nation, but knowing what we knew already about what was out there, it didn’t seem like the fairest of match ups. Only sophomores were allowed to play by NJCAA rule, so right off the bat, our conference player of the year was ineligible, because he was technically a freshman. We had some pretty decent players, but only a handful who were NCAA Division 1 commits. The United States team was loaded with D1 commits, including national player of the year Jae Crowder from Howard College. Am I setting you all up for the story of a real massacre? We practiced for three days and then drove vans to Las Vegas. The USA team guys all flew in. We were actually leading at the half, 52-48. I told my son Jordan to take a picture of the scoreboard- we could say we won to people back in Phoenix and show them the picture. I mean, no one in Arizona even knew this game was happening, right? The second half, the USA team, and especially Jae Crowder and Michael Glover asserted themselves and won handily. But, we gave them a go. From then on, the game would be a traditional East-West affair.

Next time: the Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout is born...

It's big game week for me! After games at Corona del Sol, Skyline, Campo Verde, Casteel, and Sunrise Mountain (most of which I was the only media there), I'm heading out to Chandler and the Southeast Valley for the big tilt between Liberty and Basha. One of these 0's has got to go.

Liberty (4-0) has back-to-back marquee games as it just defeated Saguaro 26-17. The Lions are outscoring their opponents 175-31 and are averaging almost 44 points per game. QB Navi Bruzon (who was 12-of-13 in last year's Open game vs. the Bears) is completing 81 percent of his passes with 13 TDs and no picks.

Basha (5-0) blanked Cactus last week 58-0. The Bears are outscoring their opponents 255-52 and haven't been tested in their four games against Arizona schools. Demond Williams Jr. (who I will be seeing for the first time in a varsity game) is completing 71 percent of his passes with 14 TDs and just one interception.

Looking forward to the atmosphere of this one. With Hamilton and Chandler still on the Basha schedule, I think this one is more important for the Bears to win. Liberty can probably stamp at least a top 4 Open seed with a win here.

So now that it took me 100 days to finish
what does it look like just for 6A?

Login to view embedded media Hoophall West is back in the Valley once again and today they officially released the programs that’ll be playing this year. (Games will be announced tomorrow)


Although you can find some of the matchups on the AIA website (Brophy/St Mary’s, Perry/San Ysidro amongst others) it’ll be interesting to see how they schedule the teams and games.

If the Friday games are good enough, I might choose those over the 4A/5A championship games for football. I’m excited to see McCain and Centennial as well as Holland and Demmings from Duncanville who return after last season’s buzzer beater over Montverde. As a Chicago native I’m happy to see Simeon make it out this year and I hope for a Notre Dame/Gorman or Centennial/Gorman matchup

On the girls side, it’ll be nice to see Desert vista get even more attention because that’s an AAU team playing at a public school

The ACCAC...

Before continuing, I just read a book called "Black Market" by Merl Code, about the recent FBI investigations into college basketball. The book led me to an HBO documentary called "The Scheme", which was the same story, but told by Christian Dawkins. All I can say is WOW- I recommend both to this audience.

Back to MCC...

Although picked to finish 11th in the conference, we ended up finishing third at 15-7, 19-8 overall. Let me say right here that the ACCAC night in and night out is a very tough conference. You have to be ready to play every night, or you will lose. When we first got there, it was kind of sorting itself out down the stretch with the D1’s at the top, but on any given night you could get beat, even then. Over the years of my tenure, the D2’s got stronger. I firmly believe to this day that all the basketball teams in Arizona should go D1 for a few reasons. First, it may force the various districts to look at more creative ways of funding their programs for excellence, and not just participation. I say do them for excellence or don’t do them, which is the attitude we faced in the Midwest and South. Second, the NJCAA would then take our region winner to Hutch every year, as they did in the old days. Third, the national tournament in Hutchinson is THE tournament for juco’s, I don’t care what anybody says. It is an experience like no other, played in a 10,000 seat arena which also serves as a museum for junior college basketball. An Arizona team hardly ever goes, because we have to fight through Region 18 to get there, and has never won it.

No one ever seemed to learn much from how we finished in 2009, as we were routinely picked to finish in the middle or lower end of the conference every year I was at Mesa. We made the Division 1 playoffs that first year- it was always the top four teams that went. What helped was that we talked Connor Isley into coming back to college basketball. He had been a point guard for us at Mountain Pointe on a final four team, and knew our system backward and forward. He was definitely the "coach-on-the-floor" that you hear about. We were also very fortunate to have a young man named Clint Hamilton from Texas walk into the gym one day and want to try out. He was leaving a small Division 3 NCAA school after his freshman year, because he thought he was better than that. He was what people in the profession refer to as a "tweener", because at 6'5" with his skill set, he was both a guard and a big-man, while at the same time being neither. But, he was exceptionally skilled and could play anywhere on the court. Plus, he had a real nose for the ball and would end up leading the conference in rebounding. He had three games during the season where he had more than 20 rebounds, which is exceptional. For any young coaches reading this, Clint helped me realize that rebounding is one of the most overtaught skills in the game. Some guys just have a knack for it and some don't, so don't overdo how much time you spend on that.

Everyone was right about Arizona Western being the cream of the crop, as they beat us both times we played them in the regular season. Our first playoff opponent was Eastern Arizona, which had a very talented team that included the conference player of the year and future NBA player Mike James. It was a fantastic game and we hung in there until the last two and half minutes, suddenly finding ourselves down by seven. But this was a resilient group and we ended up scoring the last nine points of the game to win 92-90. It was an improbable comeback, finished off by a three point play by Josh Deane with three seconds left. His finishing play was notable because we had worked on jump hooks with the right and left hands the entire year, but Josh had never executed a left hand jump hook in live action all year. At that moment, he executed it perfectly- got fouled and made the free throw. We were tied 69 all with our next opponent, Cochise, with 58 seconds left, and at the line shooting two. We missed both, and Cochise went down and scored a bucket. We missed our next attempt from the field, and went to the offensive glass hard, leaving ourselves vulnerable for a break out going the other way- which is exactly what happened. Cochise scored a layup and we were called for an intentional foul and ended up losing 75-69. All things considered, we had a great year.

The immediate downside to the first year was that half of our coaching staff could not continue working for free. There is no upside to that. We did not get one word of encouragement from our administration, and all attempts to go to bat for coaches getting paid or getting on campus jobs failed. I even had one VP tell me that they were “just coaches”, so what could they really do, after all. These were men with Master’s Degrees who were labelled “just coaches”. This would plague me my entire career at Mesa.

The upside was that we had a strong group of returning players. This was before the era of “I didn’t get to play, so I am transferring”. This was the era of “now it’s my turn.” If we were going to beat Western, however, we were going to need that special player who could get you buckets when needed. Those guys were always hard to find, especially when you basically had no scholarships to offer. The offer was coaching, getting better, and improving your situation at the next level.

That player would appear in the form of one Stephen Rogers.

Next time: the first championship...

We're coming up on the halfway point of the season after this week's games (for those that haven't had a bye yet). After going to Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Queen Creek over the first 4 weeks, I'm finally going West and will be heading to Sunrise Mountain to see the Mustangs against Boulder Creek. This will be the first meeting between the 2 schools.

Boulder Creek (3-1) has won 2 straight and scored at least 21 in each game (37 ppg). Junior Rowan McKenzie had 4 TD passes last week to give him 11 on the season. Dylan Niemeyer has been reliable and has a TD catch in each of the Jaguars' games. I see in the box score that Sinjin Schmitt, BC's leading rusher, didn't play last week. Sophomore Karsten Cornell stepped in and had 15 carries for 102 yards. So, we'll see who's in the backfield on Friday night.

Sunrise Mountain (3-1) has also won 2 straight (on the field). The Mustangs have scored at least 31 in their last 3 games after the opening night shutout against Liberty. The offense is waiting for a pair of transfer QBs to become eligible (in its next game). In the meantime, it's been run, run, run. Sunrise is averaging less than 7 passes per game (162 run plays, 27 pass plays). Senior Rex Underhill leads the team in rushing with 312 yards and 4 TDs. Micah Johnson, a receiver, is also getting it done on defense as he had a pair of picks last week, bringing one back to the house.

Looks to be a good one out in Peoria on Friday night. Both teams are heading into a bye week on Oct. 7, so I'm sure they'll leave it all out there.

NOTE: Sunrise Mountain's record has been corrected to 3-1 as the AIA has awarded them a forfeit victory in Week 2 over Millikan. The California team had to forfeit its 4 wins due to an ineligible player. The Rams are now 1-5 after winning last Friday night (58-54).

So, off we went to Missouri for our first two games as a staff in junior college. Moberly College had a beautiful facility to play in- the Cotton Fitzsimmons-Maury John Arena. This was going to be a great way to kick off our careers, or ruin them. Our first opponent was Missouri State University-West Plains, ranked 15th in the Division 1 pre-season poll. Being ranked 11th in our own conference poll meant, of course, that we had no standing nationally. We upset MSU West Plains 65-59, in a very hard fought and physical game. It was notable to us, because late in the game we ran our spread offense. Most people told us that we would never be able to use the four corner in college because of the shot clock, which was then 35 seconds. I thought “you never know”, so we put it in to our practices anyway. At the time, I was thinking end-game scenarios. Little did I know what would happen next. After our game, we all went into the stands to watch #2 ranked Moberly play a pretty talented college from Kentucky. Moberly pressed the entire game and gave their opponents a pretty good beating, easily scoring over a hundred points. As we watched, we became convinced that a similar fate awaited us if we played Moberly straight up. It was decided that as long as they pressed us, we would spread them tit-for-tat. We thought they would be committed to the press at the beginning, but then might waiver if we started running the shot clock down and from time-to-time getting some easy baskets. As it turned out, they stayed committed to the press for the entire game, which caused us to stay committed to the spread offense the entire game. That is literally all we ran. We did play pretty good defense, too. We controlled the tempo the entire game and ended regulation tied at 61. We then outscored Moberly 11-6 in overtime to win 72-67. I’ve got to admit that it was one of the most satisfying wins in my entire career. The team was waiting for us in the locker room and the coaches got doused with water pretty good.

I think the most memorable moment for me came a little bit later when we were eating pizza provided to us by Moberly after the game. We were up at the mezzanine level of the arena, in a conference room. The door suddenly popped open and some old guy who we didn’t know popped in and said “now that’s how you play basketball.” He turned and walked out without saying anything else. He didn’t need to. There we were in Fitzsimmons-John Arena, where we had just played the winningest junior college program in history and had prevailed. We had arrived. Over the years, we played in Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and Iowa in the midwest, and the people in those areas seemed to have an understanding and appreciation for basketball and its history that was lacking in our home state. Another interesting result of the Moberly game was that very few people in Arizona would ever know what happened there that night. When I walked in to work on Monday morning back in Mesa, the athletic secretary asked me “hey, how did you guys do this weekend?” That tells you all you need to know about junior basketball in the Phoenix area.

Next time: The ACCAC...

Setting the tone...

We found out that by having summer PE classes for basketball, that we could double the amount of contact time we could provide to our players. The NJCAA rule was similar to the NCAA rule of eight hours per week. Those eight hours included any meetings, conditioning, or weight room workouts. The loophole in the rule was that if you had a PE class, those hours didn’t count against the eight. The only downside was that the class had to be open to all students, so there were always a few guys enrolled who were not going to be on the team. Regardless, these classes became one of the foundations of our teaching fundamentals to our guys, and a whole bunch of regular dudes became better city league players as well.

First impressions are always important, so this first group set the tone for our future at MCC. We gave them copies of our basketball/life philosophy and made sure that we adhered to it. If you don’t come in the door that way, it can never be recaptured. That is one of the biggest mistakes young and/or new coaches make coming in. We had to concentrate totally on that first group. We had to assume that they knew nothing, so the old line of “this is a ball” became an inside joke among the coaches. So, the first year was really about establishing our core program beliefs and figuring out the level of Division 1 NJCAA. As we were making our schedule, we had to figure out a way to play nationally prominent Division 1 schools in the non-conference portion. It quickly became apparent that it would be difficult to get teams from around the nation to come play us at Mesa. There was so much good competition in the southern and mid-western portions of the country that teams did not want to pay to come and play Mesa and maybe a couple of other Valley D2’s. So, if we were going to see what was out there, we would have to travel. Our recruiting budget was $0, and so was our travel budget for out-of-state games. That meant if we were going to go anywhere away from Arizona, we were going to have to raise money to do it.

We looked on the NJCAA website for teams who were having pre-season tournaments and advertising for participants; quickly finding one in Moberly, Missouri. The name rang a bell for me, because I knew that Cotton Fitzsimmons, a former Phoenix Suns legendary coach, had coached there. So, we figured they must be pretty decent. Little did we know that they would appear in the pre-season rankings later at #2, and were, in fact, the winningest junior college in history. Another aspect of junior college travel that we were not aware of were guarantees for tournament participants. Moberly was offering hotel rooms and cash, which was fantastic. That would ultimately be the way we were able to attract so many great teams to our Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout. All we would have to do is get to Missouri somehow.

Our athletic director that first year was Jeff Fore. He was an ex-coach out of Missouri, so when we came to him with our idea of getting out there to Moberly, he was all for it. Problem was, we had no money. and, as mentioned, the out of state travel budget for MCC was $0. Curiously, there is a line item in the budget that lists an amount for out of state travel, but coaches are forbidden to touch it. My guess is that it is used for something else. For the first and only time in my career at Mesa, the AD said he would spot us the cash with the provision that we would have to raise it along the way and pay him back. Can you imagine that level of trust? We did pay it back, but Jeff only lasted one year and we were never given that opportunity again. He got fired, but is now the AD at Park University in Gilbert. We really liked Jeff, because he was a visionary, which most high school and urban junior college AD's are not. They are more of the bureaucratic ilk, which means "don't bring me any problems". Money, and where to get it was an example of the problems they do not like. I think Jeff Fore is already doing great things at Park. It was a big loss for MCC, but he wanted to move much faster than they did. He brought problems, if you understand my meaning. We would have to raise the money for travel first from then on, even though we had honored our commitment.

Going in we had a very limited sense of the ACCAC, just like most people. When I had coached at Yavapai College in the 80’s, there was only one level of junior college athletics and there were over 400 participating colleges. In the 90’s, the junior colleges split into three divisions which mirrored the NCAA. In Arizona, the urban college basketball programs almost immediately dropped into division two, with one exception- Mesa. MCC for many years had been the flagship for athletics in the conference, in particular men’s basketball. There was a strong tradition and several great coaches had passed through the school, so there was a reluctance to wave the white flag and drop to division two. Neither the school nor the district imposed a demand to drop to that level, so while most of the sports on campus did make the drop, men’s basketball did not. Knowing that is what drew me to the job in the first place.

What we didn’t know also was that the district had decided not to fund any sports that decided to stay in Division 1 appropriate to that level. Back in the beginning of the conference, coaches were given a certain number of tuition waivers for their sport. Somewhere along the way- when tuitions were $325 a semester, the district froze those waivers and began calling them “athletic talent” scholarships. Tuition costs continued to rise over the years, but the talent scholarships have been continually frozen at $325 per semester. In basketball, we were allowed twelve of those scholarships, which meant that our total scholarship budget the entire time I was at Mesa was $7,800 annually. Chew on that one for a minute. I remember sitting in the locker room one time with a recruit and his mother, and she said that because her son was such a good player, we were willing to pay for one class each semester, which is about what $325 covered. Yes, ma’am but….we lost the kid.

Since we could never really talk money with prospective student athletes, we had to sell our ability to coach, our program, and the fact that as a Division 1 program we would be at a better level than our Valley sister schools, thus giving a player more exposure to four year colleges. That proved to be correct, as during our tenure we put more players into NCAA Division 1 schools than all the other Maricopa schools combined. We went after good students, because the college had what were called Presidential Scholarships for high achieving students from local high schools. Those scholarships were tuition waivers, like athletics had been given in the old days. We looked for great students who were really good players, and who had a chip on their shoulder about being under recruited by Division 1 NCAA schools. In the beginning years for us, they were not hard to find.

Not only did we want to know who was out there nationally, but we needed to find out who the bigshot was in our own conference. Since the split in divisions, Arizona Western, a Division 1 school, had risen to the top of the heap, followed by the other remaining D1’s in the league- Cochise, Eastern Arizona, Central Arizona, and Yavapai College. When we came in, the D2’s in the Valley were not holding up that well against those schools. It had become a two tiered conference, which had a lot of people wondering if it could really continue that way. At our first coaches meeting, Mike and I learned that the esteem in which Mesa was once held had evaporated, as we were picked to finish 11th (out of 12) by the coaches in our league. Of course, that became instantly good locker room material. It was clear, though, that Western was the target.

End of Part 1

The Devil Train: The Case for Rooting for Arizona State in 2022​

This week, I'll be making my first trip to Casteel HS to see the 3-0 Colts take on the 3-0 Casa Grande Cougars. Before the season, I struck up a conversation with the person that runs the Casteel social media account. They invited me to a game out there and I looked at the schedule and saw what looked like 3 tough road games: Mountain Ridge, Upland (CA), and Williams Field. I said if Casteel could take 2 out of 3, I'd make the trip down. Well what do you know, the Colts went out and won all 3!

Casteel is averaging 30 points per game. Landon Jury is in his second year as the varsity starter. Last season, he had 8 TD passes and he's closing in on that number with 6 in his first three games. Jury also leads the team in rushing with 152 yards (and 3 TDs). Sophomore WR Elijah Beamon already has an offer from NAU. Cornerback Jeremiah Newcombe (a junior) has 17 offers, including 9 from the Pac-12.

Casa Grande comes in riding a 16-game winning streak after running the table to the 4A title last year. The Cougars have scored at least 40 points in each of their games. CG has a dual-threat QB in sophomore Eltorna Gant, who also leads his team in rushing. Nathan Long is the team's top wide receiver. If Casa Grande is to compete in this one, it can't have 19 penalties like it had in the Central game last week (a 40-30 win).

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Saw this on Twitter, put your Arizona State coaching staff together inn the comments below

The Vision...

The vision starts with a staff, so the first thing I did upon being named head coach at Mesa Community College was to get a one together. This is the most important thing a head coach does. A coaching staff must be united. As mentioned, I found out right away that the Maricopa Juco’s view assistant coaches pretty much the same way as all the high schools do- not worthy of any legitimate pay. There are few exceptions in high school, which explains the constant transiency of coaching jobs. It is really hard to get a great staff and hold them together at these levels. Further exacerbating the problem at MCC was that the men’s basketball practice bloc was 1-4PM. If any assistant coach candidate had a full time job, that would make participation in practices very difficult. The women’s team had the 4-7 slot, so my only other real choice would have been after 7PM. That is not good for men with families, and if part of your philosophy is talking about family importance, you can’t do that to people. You have to live your philosophy or it is meaningless.

I have been lucky with holding a staff a few times, but it never lasts long. When I interviewed at Mountain Pointe many years ago, the Principal was Harold Slemmer. The interview I had there included only three people- the Principal, the Athletic Director, and the District AD. That is why I knew they meant business. He asked me what it would take to have the #1 program in the state, which incidentally was the only time in 40+ years of coaching that I was asked that particular question. Even MCC avoided that question, even though that is a very important one, and probably should be the first one out of the decision maker’s mouth. I told Harold that there were three things that would guarantee success- getting my staff on campus with jobs, having a class dedicated to the basketball players, and having rent free access to the gyms in the summer. Dr. Slemmer looked at me and said “we can do that”. Within three years, we had the number 1 ranked team in the Arizona Republic poll. Then, Dr. Slemmer left for the AIA and it was never the same.

The first person I called to join me at Mesa was Mike Grothaus. I had gotten to know Mike while I was at GCU. He was a new assistant there, having just finished his playing career as an Antelope. Or so we thought. It turned out that he had one semester of eligibility left, and halfway through the year as a result of some player losses, Scott asked him to suit up and play his last semester. Can you imagine that one? He started the year barking orders to players in his role as a coach, and the next thing you know he is heading into the locker room as a player. He admitted to me later how awkward that turned out to be. As a coach, Mike and I quickly became fast friends, as he had played for my good friend Tom Bennett at Gilbert High School, and I had coached against their team while at Mountain Pointe. Mike and I shared a lot of the same values as coaches and had a common background in who we learned from. We called it "the tree", and the roots were Coach Bennett and Coach Youree. When he became a player again, Mike would never talk to me about things that were discussed by players in the locker room, even though I tried to get information from him. I had the utmost respect for him for that, and was so fortunate to have him join my new staff. Scott Mossman was an excellent and tireless recruiter, and he had passed that knowledge onto Mike. Nothing is more important to college basketball than the ability to recruit, and Mike had it. And he was living at his parent’s house, and unmarried. We could scrape together some “adjunct” PE classes and perhaps some fitness center hours so he could actually make some money.

I also convinced a couple of my former assistants at Mountain Pointe to join in. Lane Waddell was our junior varsity coach for most of my ten years at MP, and was a fellow social studies teacher there, as well as a very good friend. What Lane brought to MCC was an understanding of our system, as well as an administrative sense and ability that every program needs. His teaching schedule at MP was such that he could make most of the practices- albeit late. I also asked Rex Morrison, a former freshman coach for us at MP to join. Rex and I had been friends and teaching colleagues for many years starting all the way back at Camelback High School. He was a great communicator with the public and salesman for the program, and like Lane, was well versed on our teaching techniques. And like Lane, Rex had a teaching schedule- then at Paradise Valley High School- that allowed him to make many of the practices. These guys were big believers in our philosophy and understood that loyalty was key. Thus, I completely trusted them when they had conversations with players, or anyone else for that matter, which as any head coach will tell you is very important.

Finally, we had a young man join us from Michigan named Josh Kutchinski. He had been a high school and junior college coach up there for several years, but decided to move to Arizona to try and catch on somewhere. By the time he got ahold of us, Mike, Lane, and Rex were already in place. I felt with Mike, our recruiting would be solid, which it was. With Lane, I felt that all of the various academic and administrative needs would be met, and Rex would handle community relations. Plus it would be fun to be around these guys again. So with Josh, we wanted him to coordinate fundraising. What no one in the Valley, including myself, knew was that the Maricopa Community College athletic programs are not funded very well. I will speak more to that later, but it became immediately apparent that as the only Division 1 program in Maricopa County, we were going to be up against some pretty powerful and well funded programs across the United States. For example, Indian Hills, Iowa reportedly had a recruiting budget of $250,000, while MCC's was $0. So, I asked Josh to take on that role initially, with whatever help I could give him. He had no other employment, and went to our MCC athletic director to try and get jobs in the game management area for all the sports on campus- gym and field set-ups, announcing, etc.

There it was- a great staff. The only thing missing over the subsequent years was any interest from MCC about who we had on staff and how to pay them. The amount they were willing to give for assistant coaches in 2008 was $4100. That was not $4100 each- that was $4100 to split among them in any way the head coach wanted. A joke and a sign of the esteem that coaches were held in across the district. That would never change during my tenure at MCC. These were great men and dedicated, knowledgeable coaches. The chance of keeping them together for any length of time was remote, at best. This first group would last one year. It boggles my mind to think of what we could have done at Mesa if we could have held this group together.

There were six players who could have returned from the prior year’s team, which at that time was about right for a junior college team. In principle, you would lose about half of your team from one year to the next. After assembling the staff, the next step was to meet with the returning players. We did that and three of them decided right away that this new program was not for them. That’s OK and not unexpected when new people take over. So, we had a staff and three players. There weren’t any small colleges of note in the area that had basketball programs, other than newly named Arizona Christian University, formerly Southwestern Bible College, where Paul Westphal cut his coaching chops. In that era, guys who wanted to play there had to have a keen interest in becoming church pastors, which narrowed their player field considerably. There weren’t many prep schools around then either to offer post grad teams where players could play and not lose any college eligibility. And, as mentioned previously, neither Arizona State or Grand Canyon hit the Arizona players that hard. We would go on in my tenure to help 35 players get Division 1 NCAA scholarships, but ASU, UofA, GCU, and NAU never recruited a single one of them.

Mike Grothaus had a list of players that he had been in contact with at GCU, and since GCU really wasn’t that interested in most of them, he was able to start talking to them about coming to MCC. Although late in the recruiting process, we were able to put together a pretty solid group of guys to go along with the three returners. What we gleaned right away was that there was a sizable amount of Arizona guys who were good, skilled players that were overlooked by national recruiters. These kids generally had a chip on their shoulder and were out to prove their worth. As a coach, those are the best kind of players to have. Mike, being a player from that Tom Bennett-Royce Youree tree, also knew how important good character was to that equation.

Next: Setting the tone...

Here are the Arizona High School Football Alumni on 2022 NFL Rosters​

Here's the report from AZ Family

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Haven't seen the Coyotes play at Campo Verde in 9 years. The past 3 times I've seen them play, they were on the road. Making my way to Gilbert this Friday to see them against Apollo. Should be a good test for the Campo D.

I last saw Apollo (1-1) in 2018 and then went to the Hawks' spring game in 2019, which was the first for head coach Aaron Walls. AHS improved from 2-8 his first season to 8-3 last year (and a playoff appearance). Of course, the star attraction at Apollo is running back Adam Mohammed. Through 2 games, the junior has 413 rushing yards and 7 TDs. Silas Chicharello returned at QB last week and had 2 TD passes, so Mohammed isn't having to do that job again (like he did in Week 1).

Campo Verde (1-0) only got to play about 6 minutes last Friday night. Then the rains and lightning came and with their opponent coming from Tucson (Ironwood Ridge), the Nighthawks did not return on Saturday to finish it. Unfortunately for the Coyotes, that cost them a likely victory as CV led the game 20-0 when it was stopped. That defensive effort followed up on an 18-0 win in Campo's opener in California. I believe their quarterback, Ashton McPherson, was injured in that game. Mason Shea moved over from receiver to finish it. Junior running back Athan Ferber went over 100 yards (115) in the win over Chavez. Campo Verde also made the 5A playoffs in 2021, despite a 4-6 regular season record.

Through 13 varsity games, Mohammed has had 100 or more yards in all 13 of them. Will Campo be the first to keep him under the century mark?