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Class 3A championship up for grabs
By Dan Rasmussen, Deseret News Published: Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010 10:57 p.m. MDT
Heading into the final week of the 2010 regular season, sizing up Class 3A was fairly easy.
There were top-ranked Hurricane, two-time defending champ Juan Diego and a whole bunch of other secondary contenders.
But it's hardly as easy to figure out 3A now.
Not after what the Cedar Redmen did to Hurricane last Thursday.
In a highly anticipated matchup to decide the No. 1 seed from Region 9, Cedar simply blew the doors down against Hurricane, a team that had been ranked No. 1 for almost the entire season.
The Redmen stunningly jumped out to a 38-7 lead early in the fourth quarter, then held on from there to ultimately win 44-30 in a game that sent reverberations throughout the state.
It was an absolute shocker — shocking because of the way that Cedar obliterated Hurricane — and it's made everyone rethink what they thought they knew heading into the opening round of the 3A tournament this weekend.
"Definitely," said Juan Diego coach John Colosimo when asked whether Cedar's big win changed his thinking. "I knew that Cedar was a good team, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they beat those guys, but they seemed to do it easily. It does change it."
Atop the list of changed considerations, Colosimo believes Cedar, with star running back Matt Grover leading the way, should now be considered one of 3A's leading contenders.
Rest assured that Hurricane coach Chris Homer, whose team was badly humbled last week, believes that Cedar is one of 3A's best teams, if not its best.
"I believe that," said Homer. "First of all, they have really great coaching and they buy into what they do. It just seems like they're so deep in a lot of positions where maybe in the past they haven't been quite so deep. Their best player, Grover, got hurt very early in our game and didn't play a whole lot in the first half, and they just plugged in another fullback and kept chugging away."
Continuing to chug away is the much-harder-than-it-sounds challenge for Cedar coach Todd Peacock, who hopes his players can find a way to somehow sustain their high level of play over the next several weeks.
Peacock, for his part, believes that any number of teams could ultimately win the 3A state championship, a sentiment shared by Homer, Colosimo and a bunch of other folks.
"I think it's pretty wide-open other than somebody's gotta knock off Juan Diego, who's won it two years in a row," said Peacock.
Cedar's reward for beating Hurricane last week is the possibility of having a pair of first-round home games, while Hurricane's punishment for losing is a first-round showdown with 8-2 Morgan at home — with a road trip to Park City likely awaiting the Tigers in the second round if they can somehow get past a really good Morgan team first.
A lot of folks have believed Region 9 and Region 11 to be the two toughest leagues in Class 3A this fall, and the Hurricane-Morgan clash is one of two highly anticipated contests between Region 9 and Region 11 in Round 1. (Desert Hills at Bear River is the other.)
Homer, though, cautioned against such thinking — for now.
"I think the interesting thing is everybody wants to say, 'It's Region 9, Region 11. Region 9, Region 11,'" said Homer. "But until we get a game or two into this playoff situation, I think it's hard to say that a Delta, who played us extremely tough in Week 2, and a Park City, who's just learned a new offense but every week they're getting better, shouldn't be in the mix.
"If you look at the No. 1 seeds (Cedar, Park City, Juan Diego and Delta), I don't think you can rule out anybody."
Colosimo agreed.
"The region champs always have an advantage being able to play two at home," he said.
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