With increased Tucson talent, Arizona Football needs to deliver

With Tucson seemingly increasing in the volume of football athletes, it’s time for the Arizona Football program to start delivering by recruiting local talent.

Not typically known to be a hot bed for local talent, Tucson has seen an uptick in the number of talented football players to come through the city. With that increased talent, it’s time for the Arizona Football team to start delivering on the recruiting front!

At this point, we should all be familiar with the recruiting struggles the Wildcats have had over the past few years.

Arizona Wildcats

Arizona is a school with virtually no tradition or history of success, so it makes competing against the likes of Oregon, USC, Washington, etc. in their own conference that much more difficult.

Now magnify that on a national scale, and Arizona isn’t just competing regionally for recruits in their own backyard, they’re competing Nationally. Look no further than the immense talents in five-star Bijan Robinson and four-star Lathan Ransom.

Both tremendous athletes just five minutes from campus, they had every offer imaginable and decided to go elsewhere. Because they did, it seems as if the Wildcats failed in some way, as if they seemingly did not make Tucson enough of a priority.

Look, I’m not going to be naive and assume every Tucson kid wants to stay home or needs to stay home, however, I think there needs to be an increased effort here.

Sure, we’ve had the likes of Ka’Deem Carey, Jared Tevis, Vance Johnson, Michael Bates and John Fina among others come here and succeed, but the school has also missed out on a number of other talents like; Blake Martinez, Aaron Tevis, Rodney Peete and Riki Ellison among others.

There is some good talent from the city of the next couple years, and it’s Arizona’s chance to prioritize that now, or risk having them go elsewhere.

Those guys are;

Jonah Miller

Class: 2021
Position: OL
High School: Salpointe Catholic (Tucson, AZ)

One of the best players in the state, Jonah is going to have his pick of schools, as he has already received offers from USC, Oregon, Texas and Florida among others.

Hopefully, Arizona learned their lesson from the recruitments of Bijan and Lathan, in that the they need to be more aggressive from the start. I know having all those offers will make it difficult to keep him I’m sure, but he should be a huge priority.

Stevie Rocker

Class: 2021
Position: RB
High School: Canyon Del Oro (Oro Valley, AZ)

Stevie is a kid that has seen his recruitment slow down a little, mainly because he was injured for most of last season, but the Tucson native currently holds offers from Cal, BYU and Nevada in addition to Arizona.

He’s a good running back with good size, and when healthy he’s incredibly versatile. Arizona would be smart to still push him, as he could help to build depth in this backfield, while also continuing to develop.

The Wildcats were smart to get involved early. If he stays healthy this year, you could see big production and more offers coming.

Treyson Bourguet

Class: 2022
Position: QB
High School: Salpointe Catholic (Tucson, AZ)

Arizona is the first offer for Treyson, and this was a smart move. He’s going to develop into one of the best quarterbacks in the state for his class, and it’s best to jump in early before his recruitment blows up.

The Wildcats have had some difficulties in recruiting Salpointe High School, so they need to turn it around and quickly. It’s always going to be the best school in Tucson in terms of talent, so re-securing that pipeline and making in-roads there is going to be important. Why not start with Treyson?

Anyways, at Zona Zealots, this is just the opinion we have. We think recruiting Tucson needs to continue to improve moving forward. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!