VarsityXtra

The wide assumption (myself included) was that Phoenix Desert Vista wonderkind Devon Kennard had, for all intents and purposes, put USC and Arizona State as his top two choices.

Turns out there may have been a reason he had five schools on the list.

The Thunder lost to Gilbert on Friday night.

On Saturday, Kennard and his older brother, Derek (who’s also Desert Vista’s defensive line coach) drove six hours to El Paso, Texas, to watch Texas play at UTEP. The idea was to see what kind of place Devon might have on the Longhorns defense.

It was a road game, meaning he wasn’t allowed to talk with Texas players or coaches.  So they went to the game and drove the six hours back to Phoenix on Sunday. It’s the second time he’s gone to Texas to visit.

Among the many intriguing storylines which have surfaced early this season is the one involving Tempe Prep senior running back Manny Sandoval.
For years Knights coach Tommy Brittain has encouraged the slight (140 pounds) but slippery Sandoval to come out for football only to be repeatedly turned down.
Sandoval finally relented this year, and his play has been a key ingredient in No. 4 Tempe Prep’s 2-0 start.
Despite being brought along slowly by the coaching staff – “He’s only had about 10 touches, including returns,” Brittain said. – Sandoval is tied for the team lead in touchdowns with four, three of which have been four at least 28 yards.

If the University of Arizona is known as Point Guard U, the 4A-I conference this season should go by the moniker Running Back High.

Check out some of the career and season numbers from some of the conference’s top tailbacks:

Tyree Parker, Jr., Paradise Valley: Parker ran for 1,428 yards and 22 touchdowns last season, averaging 7.4 yards per carry. Just as impressive, he didn’t lose a fumble all season. In this year’s season opener, Parker had 11 carries for 124 yards and two touchdowns in one half of work.

Beau Burton, Sr., Saguaro: Burton was the best skill player on the field when he helped Saguaro to its first of two state titles in 2006 as a sophomore. Burton was a key member of last year’s 14-0 title team, and he’s back to try for a three-peat. Burton rushed for 2,300 yards and 23 touchdowns in his first two seasons. Burton amassed 226 yards rushing and three touchdowns on 11 carries in a 56-0 win over Prescott on Friday.

Brent Michaels, Sr., Lake Havasu: Michaels carried the ball 214 times for 1,939 yards and 24 touchdowns last season, averaging 176 yards per game. Michaels had a game against Avondale Agua Fria where he ran for 470 yards and six touchdowns. He started this year off with 236 yards and five touchdowns in the season-opening win over Dysart. Michaels has scholarship offers from Army and Air Force.

Jamal Miles, Sr., Peoria: Miles ran for 1,629 yards last season even though he was forced to split carries. As the primary running back this season, Miles started the season off by running for 225 yards and four touchdowns in an easy win over Thunderbird.

Mike Brown, Sr., Cactus: Brown ran for 1,370 yards last season, which actually seems subpar when matching up against these other running backs. He ran for 1,260 yards as a sophomore, and has a good chance at running for more than 4,000 yards in his career.

Shane McCullen, Sr., Apache Junction: An Arizona State-commit (though he will play safety in college), McCullen has been tearing up the gridiron for the Prospectors for two years. McCullen rushed for 3,428 yards and 33 touchdowns his first two years of high school and still has most of his senior season left. He has 226 yards rushing this year and four touchdowns on just 13 carries in two games, and has a 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown as well.

Kadeem Carey, So., Canyon del Oro: Carey hopped up to the varsity squad last season as a freshman, and finished with 311 yards on just 24 carries, nearly 13 yards per rush. In the championship game against Saguaro, Carey had a 91-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Carey has 112 yards on 14 carries through two games as a sophomore.

Football is a fickle sport, in that games are only played once a week, and thus, most teams are lucky to play a dozen times in one season.

As a result, games get magnified in significance. Play well one week and either it’s a built-in expectation (the way Chandler Hamilton was somehow expected to win every game by 28 points last year), or you’re suddenly the team to beat. Get your teeth kicked in, and it’s www.fireourcoach.com.

This week’s trauma brings us to Phoenix Desert Vista, which was beaten soundly by Gilbert in the season opener.

The Thunder played without their leading rusher, Marcus Washington, who’s close to returning from a broken bone in his leg. Injuries have forced some shuffling, and though Gilbert has earned its way to No. 2 in this week’s poll, it had the huge benefit of playing the week before.

Gilbert deserved to win. Tigers coach Jesse Parker knows it, and Thunder coach Dan Hinds it.

It took game No. 1 for the sky to resume falling in Ahwatukee. Suddenly, Desert Vista is the most overrated team in the state.

The same thing was felt in week 8 last year when the scatterbrained Thunder wound up in the state championship game.

It’s a perennial issue in ‘Tukee, similar to the Chandler schools, Phoenix Brophy, Scottsdale Chaparral and Saguaro, and many places where expectations are sky-high.

Desert Vista might be a flop.  Or they might win the state championship.  Or somewhere in between.

So let’s find out.  Last I checked the season lasts another 10 or 12 weeks.

Take a breath.

Scottsdale Saguaro starting free safety Sam Wolfe broke two vertebrae in his back in the team’s win over Prescott on Friday, and will be out indefinitely.
Coach John Sanders said Wolfe has opted against surgery to get back as quickly as possible. That could be in as little as a few weeks, but it’s also possible he misses the season.
Wolfe was in a battle with Cole Rarrick to replace Tim Ruben at quarterback heading into the season, and was the backup after Rarrick won the job.
While Wolfe is out, Paul Porras will be the backup quarterback. Porras plays wide receiver and cornerback, but is athletic enough to move over to QB in an emergency situation.
Tim Ruben’s little brother, Teddy, is the junior varsity quarterback, but Sanders said he isn’t physically ready for varsity football.
“Maybe if we put him in a stretcher (to make him taller) and added 40 pounds to him,” Sanders said. “I don’t remember Tim being that small as a sophomore.”
In other injury news, defensive lineman Corey Adams sprained his ankle in the game against Prescott, and Saguaro hopes to get him back this week for the home opener against Tucson Sahuaro.

Apache Junction defensive end Rusty Fernando thought he had an option to play football at a Division I college next year.

Instead all he received was some hot air.

With Shane McCullen already an Arizona State commitment, news came down during the summer that Fernando received a scholarship offer to play at Army, the first time in recent memory the Prospectors had two Division I recruits. But according to coach Rich Milligan, it was a fraud.

Basically, an Army recruiter - for the military, not the football team - insinuated that Fernando had a scholarship offer to play for the school. But Milligan thought something was fishy, and contacted the football team’s recruiting coordinator, Tucker Waugh, to straighten it out.

Waugh told him the team never made an offer to Fernando. 

“The (recruiter) said some things just to get (Fernando) into the office,” so they could talk more about enrolling at the school, Milligan said. ”We learned our lesson.”

I owe an apology to Scottsdale Saguaro football coach John Sanders and his football squad. Despite consecutive state titles and Sanders’ 14-0 record as coach heading into Friday’s matchup with Prescott, I thought the loss of quarterback Tim Ruben and six of the front seven on defense would mean Saguaro was no longer unotuchable.

In our preseason predictions, I chose Scottsdale Chaparral to win the region and the state title. Well, is it too late to change my mind? While the Firebirds were lucky to escape with a win over Vail Cienega, Saguaro went up to Prescott - not an easy place to play - and blasted the Badgers, 56-0.

“Is Saguaro that good, or is Prescott just that bad?” one coach asked.

If I had to put money on it, I’d say Saguaro is that good. Sanders made multiple changes to his defense and had to replace some key cogs on offense, but so far the transition is seamless. Even one of the Saguaro players I talked to on Saturday was surprised Saturday’s game wasn’t more competitive.

Meanwhile, at Chaparral, it seems like the absence of Mike Cummings is going to hurt more than I originally expected. Right now, the Firebirds don’t have that prime-time player on offense. Whenever the team needed a play to be made last year, Cummings was the guy. Now that he and speedster Deveron Carr have moved on, Chaparral is searching for someone to step up.

With the way Paradise Valley carved up Glendale Sandra Day O’Connor in its season opener, and how Apache Junction has looked in the earlygoing, the 4A-I Desert Sky Region might be the best in Arizona.

But the cream of the crop, as it’s been for two years, still seems to be Saguaro.

Given the way both Hamilton and Brophy’s defenses have played, we could see the 2007 state semifinals all over again — hopefully without the sideways rain and flooded field (Darryl Webb/Tribune)

Emptying the vault following Friday night’s No. 1 vs. No. 2 tilt which couldn’t fit into our Saturday morning coverage…

Hamilton’s home bleachers were full. So was Brophy’s visitor seats. The sidelines were packed two-and-three-deep, and most of the sides of the surrounding track had people watching. It was comparable to a Chandler-Hamilton game.

It’s early, but those are at least two of the top three defenses in 5A Division I.

The Huskies’ shutout was impressive. If it wasn’t Justin Rosales making tackles in the backfield, it was Ruben Rubio at linebacker or the 6-foot-3, 270-pound defensive tackle Michael Sylvestre picking off a fourth-quarter pass.

But outside of two plays (Dante Alexander’s 36-yard touchdown run and his 24-yard run to help set up a huge field goal at the end of the first half) the Broncos were equally impressive.

Hamilton missed a few big plays early, but the Broncos defense got little help from its offense on a warm, muggy night. The Huskies scored 10 points despite starting 11 possessions on their own 30-yard-line or better. Five times, Hamilton was at midfield or in Brophy territory, but couldn’t score on any of those possessions.

Brophy played without two-year starting linebacker Adam Holzmeister, who had a cast on most of his left arm to protect broken bones. The Broncos had hoped a different kind of cast could protect his elbow for the next few weeks.

According to one of his older brothers, Brophy quarterback Beau Maggi played much of the second half with a broken finger on his throwing (right) hand. Kudos to Maggi for playing through that, especially in the wake of no real running game and getting repeatedly crunched by the Huskies’ front seven. Maggi’s mobility allowed him to move outside the pocket, but more often than not it didn’t help. And aside from a pretty 43-yard pass from Maggi to Ryan Suniga, the Broncos didn’t have a vertical threat.

They were, however, miffed. The Broncos had a quote about teamwork from New England quarterback Tom Brady inside a red and white frame, but it was later found with the glass smashed in half.

Bottom line: Both sides were right, there’s a long, long journey left to jaunt, but they could meet again in two months.