The Scouting Guru has been all over the San Gabriel Valley and beyond, and like always, he’s offered to share his thoughts, free of charge. Don’t hate, enjoy it for what it’s worth, which is one man’s opinion on the talent in the San Gabriel Valley. Today he offers his post-season high school football thoughts, and the latest in the football recruiting wars.
Well the season is finally over and with the publication of the All Area team slated for Thursday, all the awards have been passed out. So it’s time to clean out the recruiting notebook and impressions from the post-season. Great job by the Charter Oak coaches and players led by Lou Farrar and the rest of the staff. To be third in line for a possible state birth shows you that they were the best team in the SGV. Here is our top 5 at the end of the season.
Guru’s top five
1. Charter Oak
2. Bishop Amat
3. Diamond Ranch
4. South Hills
5. Rosemead
For much, much, more from the Guru, click the thread, he has plenty to discuss
In our opinion, Rosemead beats Rowland. We’ll just leave it at that.
* Here is the latest on the recruiting front. Please understand that some stuff in time sensitive and can’t be released at the present moment. Sermons, Price and Bowens are good to go with UCLA. South Hills QB Cameron Deen has several Divison 2 offers, a ton of D-1aa looks (with three to four schools very close to offering) and USC has informed him that they have a spot as a preferred walk-on . The USC offer is very interesting. Consider that many in the NFL think that Mark Sanchez will be turning pro, Mitch Mustain has only one year left at SC, Corp has two years left and Mater Dei QB Matt Barkley wasn’t exactly tearing it up this season, Deen could very well fall in line and be given a true opportunity to compete for the top spot in a couple of years. We could envision him in the same situation as Mike McDonald and Clay Matthews (players that walked on that earned their scholarship). He would be the second player in the Steve Bogan era at South Hills to make a USC roster. The other is current senior Justin Hart
* San Dimas lineman Kyle Salm has an offer from Idaho and we think that is about as good as it gets. No other school appears to be wanting to offer the prospect, so its likely that Salm would be advised to take the offer and run with it. The Vandals have done a good job in getting lineman. They were able to secure a verbal from Corona Santiago lineman Jordan Johnson.
* South Hills does a very good job in getting their game film out to schools and there are a lot of D-1aa and D-2 schools that are interested in Wayne Goss, Joe Burruel and Alex Barrios. Barrios could very well end up at Cal Lutheran (a D-3 school in Thousand Oaks) and replace another SH alum Jacob Calderon who was named D-3 1st Team All-American this year at defensive end. Sounds like their is a nice pipeline from SH to Cal Lutheran.
* Charter Oak punter Daniel Colby has also garnered a lot of attention the last couple of weeks and is sitting on a couple of walk-on offers from several D-1 schools.
* As for quarterback Chris Allen, it’s going to be an uphill climb to getting a D-1 scholarship. This is not my opinion, but it is the feeling amongst those on the recruiting circle that Allen just does not fit the measurables to being a D-1 QB. His size and speed hurts the prospect. It’ll be interesting to see if CO will send his highlight film out to D-2 schools in hopes of him getting a offer. We like the kid a lot and think he is a very good high school QB who has accomplished a lot in his career. But the realities of the game is that it’s going to be tough for him to get a D-1 offer. And such a shame!
* Another player that we think could land with a D-2 offer is San Dimas running back Daniel Joseph. He is again not big enough and fast enough to compete at the D-1 level. But if the SD coaching staff can send his film out to D-2 schools, we easily can envision him getting an offer.
* We tend to get spoiled with the officiating unit from Foothill-Citrus. They are one of the best in the Southern California. After watching the game film between South Hills and Schurr in the first round, we’d have to say that the Orange County unit is one of the worst. If you need a training tape on how not to officiate a playoff game, use the that game as a starting point.
* Right now, there are only two players that we can safely say will garner early offers from the class of 2010. They are Charter Oak RB Adam Muema and South Hills WR Ify Umodu. Muema has been rumored to have been offered by Nevada Reno and look for several Mountain West Conference schools to offer Umodu in January. As one Pac-10 Offensive Coordinator told us recently, “You just don’t see many WR with the body type and athleticism as Umodu. They are very hard to fine….Muema runs really hard and would be a no-brainer if he was 6-2 rather than 5-10.”
* The other players that could get offered early but could stumble for various reasons are running back Ricky Johnson of West Covina, Darian Johnson of Bishop Amat and Geoffrey Vaughns of South HIlls.
* One Division 1-AA schools has graded out South Hills linebacker Wayne Goss higher than Diamond Ranch LB Kyle Lenygel. Interesting.
* A case can be made for Steve Hagerty to being coach of the year in the area this year. But if he can get Amat to win seven games next year, he certainly should be coach of the year.
* My money is on Steve Ramirez to beat Robledo next year. It’s tough beating the future king. I guess Robledo and the rest of the ex-fellow man over on the west side had a tough year this year. Don’t worry Fred, there is always next year.
* Speaking of the west side, please win a game in the playoffs in the Southeast Division and then come back on here. Nothing like watching Muir underachieve this year.
* We’ve been asked by several area coaches to put together an all-underclass team. Sounds good to us, so it’ll be posted on the day after Christmas.
* OK this one has been sitting in my craw for several years and now it’s time to let it out. Covina District Field has turned into a disaster. At one time, the field was so good, you could play golf on it. But, things have turned south and now it’s become a joke. To see the field as it was for quarterfinal night against Diamond Ranch was embarrising. It’s time for Covina Valley Unified to strip the turf off and put field turf on it. Ironically, stadiums like District Field would be perfect fits for field turf. So it will be interesting if Covina Valley does the right thing and get field turf on it, or just leave things status quo and watch it get worse. Hey, I think we just answered the question.
* And speaking of doing the right thing, do you all remember when we asked about the possibility of the SGV’s National Football Foundation to have the all-star game in January? Well, the IE is doing it. And if they can do it why can’t we do it? By having the game in late June or July, the area doesn’t get treated to seeing players like Price, Deen, Bowens, Sermons and others play because they have to get into summer training programs at their respective colleges. If they had the game in mid January, a lot more coaches would be able to coach and the best players would be able to play. But, I guess – just like with the District Field problems – this suggestion will fall on deaf ears. Such a shame.
* One last point. It’s always interesting to hear parents during football games. They say the weirdest things. One place they do not belong on is the sidelines. Case in point, we were on the San Dimas sideline during their game against Northview this season (minding our business) when a parent came over to us and said “I guess you came here to watch a real team play.” Nothing more needed to be said at that point and I laughed after the game was over and Northview won. So here is a suggestion to all administrators for the 2009 season, keep the parents in the stands. They have no reason to being on the sideline and it just doesn’t make a fair representation to your school.
