Last year, Upland trotted out four players with Division I college scholarship offers, ran up more than 35 points per game behind now Stanford QB Josh Nunes and generally wowed anybody in sight. This year’s version of the Highlanders featured a faceless offensive unit with a philosophy resembling something like three yards and a cloud of turf pellets.
Yet it is Josh’s younger brother Justin Nunes (above, right) who woke up this morning the quarterback of a CIF champion after a 19-7 win over Los Osos Friday night while Upland’s four horsemen will have to settle for being college football players. Those of you familiar with espn.com’s Bill Simmons are aware of the Ewing theory, spawned from the 1998-99 Knicks reaching the NBA finals without an injured Patrick Ewing and applicable to any team’s success following the departure of marquee players. An Upland team that didn’t even make the Daily Bulletin’s preseason top 10 due to the substantial losses to graduation won the title this year that last year’s team was supposed to win.
Of course, last year’s team was an offensive juggernaut. This year’s team won with defense, which is exactly why the offense seemed so drab. Once head coach Tim Salter scored enough points to get a lead, the objective of the offense was to run out the clock.
It remains to be seen how good a quarterback Justin Nunes is but he simply wasn’t asked to do much this year because the ability of the defense was such that Upland practically asked it offense to just not lose the game.
For crying out loud, Upland didn’t allow an offensive touchdown to Baseline League co-champion and title-game counterpart Los Osos in TWO GAMES. The Highlanders shutout Los Osos 17-0 in their first meeting, then proceeded to only give up a fumble return for a score in the championship game to a Grizzlies team that scored 45 points per game during a seven-game winning streak that landed it in the first CIF championship team in school history.
What made the Upland defense so good was good old-fashioned fearlessness. This team featured a linebacking corps that averaged less than 187 pounds a member but Salter said it himself, “size is a luxury in high school. At this level speed and tackling ability are much more advantageous.”
Upland was fast enough to get to the ball an fearless enough to be physical when it got there. As players move up the ranks to college and the pros, you find less and less coaches who are able to get away with a hybrid linebacker/safety. Upland got away with about six of them, each of whom was physical enough to play linebacker and fast enough to play safety. The results speak for themselves.
