Revisiting the rankings 2007

[ngdawg]

I think Prattville played X in 2008 and lost. I guess that was a "ranking check" from 2007.

[Wooderson]

Couple highlight tapes of top five Arizona teams from 2007. Saguaro does not have the stellar soundtrack that they did on their 2K6 video but this is pretty extensive. Team with a prolific offense (QB went for 2K through the air and on the ground, two other 1K rushers) though even then the word was to take their stats with a grain of salt (i.e. the 90 sacks they claimed on D doesn't seem terribly realistic). #68 Corey Adams would go on to play at ASU and was responsible for 20+ of those 90 "sacks", and #18 Paul Porras ended up at Rice. Future Ute Beau Burton (#28) was still around from 2K6.

 

 

Blue Ridge was Arizona's premier small school program from 1994 until 2012; it was during this time that the late Paul Moro won the bulk of his state record 13 championships, oddly enough this was not one of them. BR's trademark was always execution and they were never a great producer of elite talent, though linebacker Steel Armstrong (#49) is just fantastically named. Unless you're into football camp activities you can skip to the 8 minute mark for actual football stuff.

 

Wish that Hamilton and Centennial had something on YouTube from that year as those were probably the two best teams in Arizona that year.

[954gator]

3 hours ago, ngdawg said:

I think Prattville played X in 2008 and lost. I guess that was a "ranking check" from 2007.

Ehh the game was 15-10 so was close either way.  Although Pratville won the rest of their games and STX had a horrible season.   Pratville played STA very close in 2011 (when DLS did not).

[ngdawg]

7 minutes ago, 954gator said:

Ehh the game was 15-10 so was close either way.  Although Pratville won the rest of their games and STX had a horrible season.   Pratville played STA very close in 2011 (when DLS did not).

I don't know much about Prattville except that they beat us 36-3 in 2007 or 2008 and we beat them in a nationally-ranked upset in 2009.

[Frosty4024]

20 hours ago, Wooderson said:

Adding to my skepticism at Maxpreps' rankings for this year are how they ranked Arizona: 

1. Saguaro - 14-0 4A-1 champions. One Saguaro team I can understand being ranked this high, this still a team playing third-division ball that had wins of 10, 6, 3, and 2 points.

2. Show Low - 12-1 3A champs with wins of 10, 8 (to a 5A Junior squad), and 7 (×2) points. Not much remarkable about this team in comparison to thousands of larger schools in the country. 

3. Brophy - 12-2 5A-1 champs, have to think they'd have found a spot in USA Today's rankings had they not tripped against a mediocre Basha squad.

4. Hamilton - 12-1 5A-1 semifinalist, spent the first 12 weeks of the year as the state's alpha dog before falling to Brophy in a torrential downpour in the semifinals (they beat Brophy by 23 in the regular season).

5. Blue Ridge - 11-1 3A semifinalist. Beat rival Show Low during regular season before losing a playoff rematch. Unlike Show Low this was a dominant small school team yet hard to imagine the Ls they'd take once they started playing larger schools wouldn't have been a thing this year.

6. Centennial - 13-1 5A-2 champs, with the lone loss coming to Hamilton and wins of 6 and 7 points to the 5A-2 runner-up and the 5A-1 runner-up. 

7. Chaparral - 10-3 4A-1 semifinalist, responsible for two of Saguaro's close wins. Third loss was by four points.

8. Canyon del Oro - 12-2 4A-1 runner-up, had a late lead in the title game. Only other loss was a two-point loss on a long road trip.

9. Desert Vista - 9-5 5A-1 runner-up, started the year 2-3 before finally playing to their talent level (several eventual D1 guys were on this team, mostly in the junior class) and making a run. Aforementioned torrential downpour on semifinal Friday didn't hurt either (won a matchup where the two teams had as many interceptions as they did completions and neither cracked 200 yards of total offense).

10. Red Mountain - 10-3 5A-1 semifinalist, were shutout in their first two losses (23-0 and 24-0) before falling to Desert Vista in that ugly semifinal Mud Bowl.

Beyond that top ten they had two other 3A teams, both 4A-2 finalists (with schedule strengths of 4.2 and 7.2), and a 4A-1 first round casualty ahead of the 5A-2 runner-up.

TL, DR Maxpreps seemed so confident in Hamilton's ability to smackdown the rest of 5A-1 and that no one would care about the rest of the field as long as they got that spot correct. Nature intervened though via Attack of the Mud Bowls and our end result was four public schools with enrollments of under 800 being ranked in the state's final top 20.

That said they were probably right nobody caring in the end; it's not like there's some 38-year old knob bitching about this on some Sunday morning nearly 15 years after the fact...

 

Whatever happened to Show Low?

[The Guru]

17 hours ago, Coletrain06 said:

X was very good that season, but I too thought MNW was the best team I saw in 2007

It wasn't even that.

It was the fact that he had Northwestern #1 from I believe right after the Carroll game until their close win against Deerfield Beach. Then he dropped them not to #2 but to #3.

St. X beat Dublin Coffman, 10-7, in their state semifinal but somehow that didn't matter.

[954gator]

21 hours ago, The Guru said:

Jamie DeMoney was total crap that season.

He used to post on the Texas National board and I ripped him hard for this dropping of Northwestern.

Curious what name did he post under again?  I’d love to go back and revisit that one.   

[954gator]

7 hours ago, The Guru said:

It wasn't even that.

It was the fact that he had Northwestern #1 from I believe right after the Carroll game until their close win against Deerfield Beach. Then he dropped them not to #2 but to #3.

St. X beat Dublin Coffman, 10-7, in their state semifinal but somehow that didn't matter.

I feel like Fl was just starting to get national respect around that time, but sort of on a thin rope because the depth of the state was not understood yet.  

[Wooderson]

1 hour ago, Frosty4024 said:

Whatever happened to Show Low?

The coach they won their championships under left to coach in Phoenix metro area, and overall the dynamic of 3A football shifted dramatically following the housing crash (Show Low and especially Pinetop-Lakeside are essentially summer resort towns that experienced a domino effect from out of towners selling their second homes) and then the general rise of public charters in the Phoenix area (this saw smaller schools with guys that would be playing at mid-tier 6A-4A schools playing 3A ball).  The AIA's policy change that shifted successful smaller privates up to 3A also crowded that field.

 

Good news for schools like Show Low is the AIA is now factoring previous success into conference alignments so those charters and privates are no longer in 3A.

[The Guru]

44 minutes ago, 954gator said:

Curious what name did he post under again?  I’d love to go back and revisit that one.   

It was either his name Jamie DeMoney or it was PrepNation.

Can't remember exactly.

[HurricaneNick]

19 hours ago, Wooderson said:

Couple highlight tapes of top five Arizona teams from 2007. Saguaro does not have the stellar soundtrack that they did on their 2K6 video but this is pretty extensive. Team with a prolific offense (QB went for 2K through the air and on the ground, two other 1K rushers) though even then the word was to take their stats with a grain of salt (i.e. the 90 sacks they claimed on D doesn't seem terribly realistic). #68 Corey Adams would go on to play at ASU and was responsible for 20+ of those 90 "sacks", and #18 Paul Porras ended up at Rice. Future Ute Beau Burton (#28) was still around from 2K6.

 

 

Blue Ridge was Arizona's premier small school program from 1994 until 2012; it was during this time that the late Paul Moro won the bulk of his state record 13 championships, oddly enough this was not one of them. BR's trademark was always execution and they were never a great producer of elite talent, though linebacker Steel Armstrong (#49) is just fantastically named. Unless you're into football camp activities you can skip to the 8 minute mark for actual football stuff.

 

Wish that Hamilton and Centennial had something on YouTube from that year as those were probably the two best teams in Arizona that year.

Saguaro teams led by sanders were always good. The Chap/Sag games back then were electric. The rivalry has been one sided since Mohns took over. He’ll coach on Saturday's soon, similar to how ASU picked up Aguano from chandler. I wish we would’ve gotten the DJ Foster/ Devante Neal match up before the Sanders Ragle saga ended. 

[Wooderson]

20 minutes ago, HurricaneNick said:

The rivalry has been one sided since Mohns took over. 

That's not terribly accurate considering that Mohns is 3-2 overall as an HC against Chaparral and that two very flawed Chaparral teams have played them to near standstills the past two seasons (Chaparral had a halftime lead with their backup quarterback last season, and hung over 600 yards on Saguaro with a 5-6 ballclub in 2018). 

I don't miss the "peak" rivalry as the media here ignored a lot of high-quality teams and athletes to hype Chaparral-Saguaro 12 months a year.

[DownSouth]

On 8/1/2020 at 3:24 PM, 954gator said:

Florida 5A state champs STA (14-1) ranked 111 by calpreps.  

Interesting daisy chain for STA.    STA's sole loss was @ Deerfield Beach 43-41.     

MNW met DFB in the playoffs and performed a miracle comeback to win it 19-14. 

"Deerfield Beach was driving to put the game away and faced a fourth-and-goal from the 2. Quarterback Denard Robinson was stopped just short of the end zone, giving Northwestern life.

Northwestern quarterback Jacory Harris then showed why the University of Miami is so excited about his arrival next season. He led Northwestern 99 yards in the final 2:18 for the go-ahead touchdown. Running back Tyresse Jones capped the drive on a 5-yard scoring run with 18 second left, sending the Northwestern crowd into a frenzy. Deerfield Beach players on the sideline burst into tears."

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2007-12-08-0712080024-story.html

 

 

I remember that game being on the front of the sports pages the next day (still got an actual newspaper back then). MNW took the best punch DFB could give, and that was in the playoffs; if MNW loses that game, they're out before even making the title game.

If we were Texans we would've gone apeshit talking about depth based off those teams.

South Plantation (5 wins) and Boyd Anderson (9 wins) beat DFB (11-3); NMB (North Miami Beach for the non FL folks) lost to DFB by 1, though that NMB team was pretty damn good, 3rd best team in Miami-Dade County behind MNW and BTW. STA beat Ely by 1 point that year. Booker T. beat Summerville, SC 36-3 (13-2 with AJ Green as their best player, got killed by Byrnes in their title game), but Booker T. beat a terrible Carol City team (2-8) 24-21. DEPTH! 

Had Riley Dodge not been hurt against Abilene it's very likely SLC makes it to the title game (not sure if they would've won that, a title match of SLC-Katy would've been an amazing game to see).

[The Guru]

This was Rocco's first season as DC. After the Deerfield Beach game we basically scrapped what we were doing on defense (old 4-3) and went with a stack defense with a RUSH end and more aggressive, attacking style.

It wasn't at peak efficiency yet by the end of that season (about 9-game sample size) but it set up everything that came after that.

 

[954gator]

Just realized this Miami Northwestern was ranked 49th by The computers that year SMH.

 

[nptb17]

23 hours ago, 954gator said:

Ehh the game was 15-10 so was close either way.  Although Pratville won the rest of their games and STX had a horrible season.   Pratville played STA very close in 2011 (when DLS did not).

Pratville's offense crossed mid field once that game.  The game was close because St. X was terrible on offense.  It was the beginning of them have a bad offense for a number of years.  

[nptb17]

10 hours ago, The Guru said:

It wasn't even that.

It was the fact that he had Northwestern #1 from I believe right after the Carroll game until their close win against Deerfield Beach. Then he dropped them not to #2 but to #3.

St. X beat Dublin Coffman, 10-7, in their state semifinal but somehow that didn't matter.

We talked about it a lot that year.  MNW had the type of offense to hurt St. X 3-3-5 with the big wideouts and deep balls.

[The Guru]

17 hours ago, nptb17 said:

We talked about it a lot that year.  MNW had the type of offense to hurt St. X 3-3-5 with the big wideouts and deep balls.

Yeah, while St. X's defensive front was very good the stack defense is built to stop the run first and foremost. Northwestern only ran to get 4-5 yard bumps when the defense was spread thin up front. Otherwise, they were throwing it around.

It's pretty evident from the video above that St. X's secondary would be in a world of hurt. If Jacory Harris is upright then they'd likely have a big day.

[RedZone]

5A Destrehan (NOLA) was the King of Louisiana in 2007 and 2008....Calpreps had Destrehan #18 in 2007. Fun team.

Those 2 years Destrehan probably sent 20+ to the next level combined. I'm not going to list all. 

4* QB Jordan Jefferson-LSU (remember him, lol?)

https://247sports.com/Player/Jordan-Jefferson-24418/

Few Jordan Jefferson highights State Champ game 2007......the little guy #5 running around all over the place for Destrehan was Damaris Johnson featured below....

0* SLOT/WR Darmaris Johnson (Tulsa) was the most electric Destrehan Widlcat

https://247sports.com/Player/Damaris-Johnson-55701/

Johnson hung around the NFL 4 years returning kick-offs/punts.

He returned a punt 98 yds vs the Cowboys. 😀

 

Sidenote: Destrehan produced Ed Reed (Miami Hurricanes), NFL Hall of Fame)

[RedZone]

5 minutes ago, RedZone said:

5A Destrehan (NOLA) was the King of Louisiana in 2007 and 2008....Calpreps had Destrehan #18 in 2007. Fun team.

Those 2 years Destrehan probably sent 20+ to the next level combined. I'm not going to list all. 

4* QB Jordan Jefferson-LSU (remember him, lol?)

https://247sports.com/Player/Jordan-Jefferson-24418/

Few Jordan Jefferson highights State Champ game 2007......the little guy running around all over the place for Destrehan was Damaris Johnson featured below....

0* SLOT/WR Darmaris Johnson (Tulsa) was the most electric Destrehan Widlcat

https://247sports.com/Player/Damaris-Johnson-55701/

Johnson hung around the NFL 4 years returning kick-offs/punts.

He returned a punt 98 yds vs the Cowboys. 😀

 

Sidenote: Destrehan produced Ed Reed (Miami Hurricanes), NFL Hall of Fame)

Jordan Jefferson's little brother WR Justin Jefferson (LSU) was drafted 1st RD this year.

[RedZone]

Destrehan puts out some beasts.....and has been good to the LSU Tiger

3* WR Justin Jefferson (LSU) drafted 1st Rd last year.

4* DL Glen Logan (starting DL, LSU)-will be drafted.

https://247sports.com/Player/Glen-Logan-36593/high-school-60327/

5* RB John Emery Jr (super soph, LSU) will be drafted....people will hear more from Emery Jr very soon.

https://247sports.com/Player/John-Emery-Jr-46038480/high-school-189344/

 

Not bad for a little Louisiana 5A (enrollment 1,374)....

 

 

 

[zulu1128]

On 8/3/2020 at 6:08 PM, nptb17 said:

We talked about it a lot that year.  MNW had the type of offense to hurt St. X 3-3-5 with the big wideouts and deep balls.

I recall that. Still think X would have been able to lay some contact on Harris enough to give them a shot...but definitely agree that X probably had no answer for those WRs. 

[Wooderson]

Whereas the 2006 season in Arizona featured notable seniors like Everson Griffin and Prince Amukamara the best "next level" performers in 2007 were from the junior class. Even still, here are some guys that had notable senior years that year who would have some notable experience in college.

Sean Renfree was a two-time 4A-2 champ at Notre Dame Prep before having a good career under center at Duke:

 

Jamal Wamble was a 215-pound tailback that toiled in relative obscurity at Sierra Vista's Buena High, putting up over 1700-yards on the ground as a senior before suiting up for the UNC Tarheels for a year. He'd bounce to the Kansas juco ranks before resurfacing at Northern Illinois:

 

One of Womble's teammates at Buena was Jake Muasau, who would become a standout for the early Georgia State squads and signed a free agent contract with the Giants:

 

 

 

[Wooderson]

@954gator when is our 2K8 revisit?

[954gator]

4 hours ago, Wooderson said:

@954gator when is our 2K8 revisit?

Sorry been busy.   I’ll try and get it up tonight.   I love me some 2008