By Tim Peterson
Made the annual trek up to St. George, Utah Saturday to check out Azusa Pacific do battle with Dixie State. It was ugly at first (maybe due to the 100 degree heat) but the Cougars eventually settled in to pick up a 34-5 victory.
Kurt Scoby looks like he has found a home in the APU backfield rushing for 157 yards and a pair of touchdowns, including a 49-yard TD run early in the fourth quarter. Last week Scoby ran for 164 yards in a 16-10 win over Simon Fraser. The rumors that he had actually transferred to Dixie State back in the summer have long since been forgotten.
Former Glendora quarterback Chad Jeffries threw a pair of touchdown passes to Tarik Myles in the first half to get the Cougars rolling to their third victory in four games.
We’re still getting the comments about APU being irrelevant on our boards. Can someone please explain that one to me? Other than USC and UCLA, Azusa Pacific is the only major college football program (D2) in Southern California. The Cougars are coming off a season in which they lost only one game and they had a player (running back Terrell Watson) who was in the Cincinnati Bengals camp in the summer after shattering all of Christian Okoye’s school records.
Our APU coverage doesn’t replace or even take away from our high school coverage so it’s hard to understand the backlash. If you like football why wouldn’t you want to read about a local team that plays Division 2 football?
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Speaking of USC I guess Sark is safe for another week.
**No, I wasn’t surprised that Montebello got throttled by Paraclete. Paraclete is an elite Mid-Valley team – especially at home. It reminded me of Charter Oak’s thrashing of Bell Gardens the week before. Both are good Almont teams and both will contend for the league title. But both also ran up against teams that are bigger and better right now. Both will learn from the experience. The good thing for the Oilers is that they might get another crack at Paraclete in the playoffs. They’ll definitely have some tape to look at.
Montebello running back Isaac Mendibles left the game with a knee injury. His status right now is unclear pending the results of an MRI. Montebello has a bye this week and will open league play against Schurr on October 9.
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Good win for Burbank Friday night over Crescenta Valley. The Bulldogs may just won the Pacific League title. Again, nice win but boy was that tough to watch. I was going in expecting 42-35 and got 3-0 at halftime. Miscues, mistakes and penalties were the order of the day. Seemingly not a play went by where there wasn’t yellow laundry on the field. CV controlled the clock but just left too many opportunities in the wind and in the end Noah Powell made a play. One play was all that was needed and it was Burbank that made it.
As for CV all I kept thinking was do Brian Gadsby and Connor Van Ginkel have any eligibility left?
That’s my principle.
Tim can be reached at tim@midvalleysports.com or on Twitter @tspeterson40.
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