2024 High School Football

Frog & Firkin Football Friday: Mica Mountain overpowers CDO with 43-point second quarter

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Jayden Thoreson’s performance symbolized Mica Mountain’s dominance of CDO in Friday’s 50-6 win (Stephanie van Latum/AllSportsTucson.com)

Making No. 6 Mica Mountain’s 43 points in a 12-minute second quarter even more amazing Friday night against No. 14 CDO was the Thunderbolts punting following a three-and-out possession in their first drive of the quarter.

Mica Mountain, which defeated visiting CDO 50-6 in a 4A Kino matchup, scored 43 points on only 14 offensive plays in the last 9:32 of the quarter.

Mica Mountain’s Pat Nugent, 165-66 in his 22nd season as a high school head coach, mentioned he has not experienced that much scoring in one quarter in his career.

“We just kept scoring,” he said. “I was really worried. It was a tight game in the first quarter. We knew their defense was tough.

“We aired it out a little bit and obviously we had a couple of turnovers that made that score go crazy in a hurry. Fifty points in one half is a lot. Forty-three in one quarter is a heck of a lot. We’re excited about that.”

Senior quarterback Jayden Thoreson culiminated a four-play, 67-yard possession with a 30-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jimmy Leon with 7:28 left in the quarter to give Mica Mountain (7-0 overall, 2-0 4A Kino) a 14-0 lead.

On CDO’s first play of its subsequent possession, Mica Mountain’s Jaysen Criswell caused a fumble and George Flores recovered the ball on the Dorado 12.

On the next play, Thoreson hit Leon with a 12-yard touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone. A 2-point conversion pass from Thoreson to Sergio Raygada on a trick play out of the extra-point alignment with Thoreson the holder put Mica Mountain ahead 22-0 with 7:09 remaining in the quarter.

After a CDO three-and-out, followed by a 48-yard punt by Evan Greer, Mica Mountain had possession at its 20. On the third play, Thoreson completed an 83-yard touchdown pass to Cameron Groves to increase the lead to 29-0 with 3:44 left in the quarter.

Two plays into CDO’s next possession, Mica Mountain’s Shanghat Jwander recovered a fumble at the Dorado 7.

Josiah Thornwell, who scored on a 5-yard touchdown run in the first quarter, ran into the end zone from 7 yards on the first play after Jwander’s fumble recovery to increase the lead to 36-0 with 2:35 left until halftime.

On the very next play, Jwander’s brother Benkat recovered a fumble in the end zone to put Mica Mountain ahead 43-0 with 2:18 left.

CDO’s first play in its next possession resulted in an interception by Broden Schmidt that gave the Thunderbolts the ball at the Dorado 20.

Five plays later, Thoreson connected with Riley Carson on a 14-yard touchdown pass with 10.1 seconds left until halftime to put the Thunderbolts ahead 50-0 of CDO.

The game went to a running clock in the second half with Mica Mountain ahead by more than 40 points.

“I played my best game statistically (of the season), and the whole team played its best game so far this season,” said Thoreson, who did not play in the second half after completing 11 of 14 pass attempts for 182 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions in the first half.

STRONG LIKE THOR WHEN HE NEEDED IT THE MOST

Thoreson exhibited the type of talent that produced 2,304 passing yards last season while completing 157 of 267 pass attempts with 26 touchdowns and eight interceptions.

Following Friday’s performance, he is 51 of 96 this season for 701 yards with 15 touchdowns and two interceptions.

Of Thoreson’s eight interceptions last season, three occurred in the 23-7 loss to eventual state champion CDO in the 4A state semifinal game.

“I mean, 11 months it sat with me,” Thoreson said. “I know I didn’t have my best game late November of last year playing them in the semifinals. This game was circled for me. I know it was circled for the entire team.

“I really wanted to prove that we are good at playing football.”

Nugent said Thoreson does not have similar stats as last year but mentioned that Mica Mountain is a “complete team” that will not need an abundance of passing yards in all of its games.

“We ran all day against Casa Grande (in a 41-7 win Sept. 27),” he said. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to win a football game. Everybody has to be ready to play and he (Thoreson) was ready to play tonight.”

Mica Mountain is in a 23-2 stretch over the last three seasons with the two losses coming to the Dorados last year, one in the regular season and the other in the semifinals with both games at CDO.

“They knocked out our state championship hopes last year,” Leon said. “All the seniors who basically built this program left sad after both games, so it feels good getting back for them … not only for them, but our coaches and for us.

“We’ve overcome that building block and now we’re ready to go and keep moving forward.”

LEANING ON LEON ON OFFENSE

Leon, a senior, has taken recent recruiting visits to NAU and New Mexico State and has been on the radar for Arizona and Arizona State after compiling 17 sacks last season at 6-foot-4 and 245 pounds as an athletic defensive end.

Teams are avoiding his side of the field and designing plays to prevent him from applying pressure this season. He has five sacks among his 25 tackles, with 6.5 of them for loss.

As a tight end, Leon has been unleashed this season.

Through the first seven games, his production has matched or surpassed statistically what he experienced all of last year when had 15 receptions for 192 yards with six touchdowns.

This season, he is at 15 catches for 207 yards with nine touchdowns after his three receptions for 56 yards with two touchdowns against CDO on Friday.

“It’s always great being a two-way player,” Leon said. “Makes yourself a better football player. Makes it fun when you produce and score touchdowns. Who doesn’t want to score touchdowns?”

NUGENT ON CUSP OF ANOTHER RUN TO A POTENTIAL STATE TITLE

Nugent is without that elusive state title, but that does not take away from him being one of best high school football coaches in Southern Arizona history.

The former student manager when Dick Tomey coached at Arizona reached the state title game in 2007 at CDO and lost a heartbreaker, 23-21 against Scottsdale Saguaro.

The Dorados advanced to the semifinals the following year before Nugent took over as head coach at Pima Community College.

Dustin Peace, an assistant under Nugent at CDO and a former player for him at Flowing Wells when Nugent was an assistant there, led the Dorados to a state title in 2009 in his first year after taking over for his mentor.

After Nugent returned to the high school ranks at Cienega, he reached the state semifinals in 2016 and 2017 with Jamarye Joiner at quarterback. His 2020 team with the Bobcats was one of his best with 14 seniors that season advancing to college football but COVID-19 limited that season to only two games.

He took over Mica Mountain at its infancy in 2021 and coached the Thunderbolts to the 4A semifinals last season in the Thunderbolts’ third season at the varsity level.

Now, Mica Mountain is on a mission unbeaten and playing its best football each week.

Nugent acknowledged that CDO (4-3, 1-1) is not the same as last year after losing 28 seniors and undergoing a coaching change with veteran Scott McKee taking over for Peace. He mentioned that McKee is “doing a great job with a young team.”

But that does not diminish Mica Mountain’s ability to achieve its goal of beating the Dorados after losing two tough games against them last season.

“We’ve got a lot of goals,” Nugent said. “They took a goal away from us of winning a state title last year. They took that away from us when we lost to them.

“Our kids are grinding right now. We’re ready to go. We’ve got to keep getting better every week. We’ve had three great performances in a row offensively and defensively (in wins over Casa Grande, 59-7 against Pueblo and Friday night’s win over CDO). It’s CDO. We know they are a great program. We’ve got to go out and do that every week right now.”

SHOWDOWN WITH WALDEN GROVE LOOMS AHEAD

No. 10 Walden Grove (5-2, 2-0) is on a five-game winning streak and will host Catalina Foothills (1-6, 1-1) on Friday before welcoming Mica Mountain to its field in two weeks.

The Red Wolves’ two losses are against No. 7 Northwest Christian (6-1) by a score of 21-16 at Walden Grove in the season opener and No. 4 Arcadia (7-0) in a 24-21 outcome in Phoenix in the second week of the season.

The game with Corey Noble’s team will strengthen the power points for Nugent’s Thunderbolts and vice-versa.

“Walden Grove is going to be a beast,” Nugent said. “They’re going to be a tough one. They’re a heck of a football program. We’ve got to work on Sahuaro (on the road Friday).

“Our kids are so focused. We know when we were that close last year. These kids know from January 1, we’ve talked about winning that title and keeping that 4A state title here in Tucson. That’s what our goal is. We know it’s not going to be easy. We need to stay healthy. Our kids have responded. We’re going to keep fighting every week.”

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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.

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