How the Utah Top 10 Fared

Utah's board went 8-2 and the arithmetic is not the story. Two teams played somebody good. Both lost.

Corner Canyon controlled roughly eighty percent of that game in Peoria and lost it 38-24. That is not a contradiction. That is the road, against a good team that plays good defense, and it is the oldest way there is to lose a football game.

The results

The question mark came to roost

Corner Canyon's offense was the question coming into this season. Everybody in the state knew it and most people declined to say it out loud while the scoreboard kept reading 49-0.

It got asked properly on Friday and the answer was 24 points, then nothing. The Chargers led 24-14 and did not score again.

Then there is the scoreboard's other half, and it is worth splitting properly. Liberty scored 38. Seven of those points came on a pick six. The defense gave up 31.

Thirty-one on the road against a team of that quality is still too much to overcome, and Liberty of Peoria is that quality now whatever the number next to its name says. But an offense that hands over a touchdown without the defense taking the field is a different problem from a defense that gets worn down, and the two should not be filed under the same heading.

This costs Utah nationally. Corner Canyon is the state's only team on our national board and it is the argument the whole region leans on in September. That argument got weaker on Friday and pretending otherwise would be a waste of everybody's time.

So is Mountain Ridge the best team in Utah?

Corner Canyon has been the answer to that question for long enough that nobody has had to ask it. It is worth asking this morning.

Mountain Ridge is 4-0. It has scored 41, 42, 42 and 59. It beat Davis, then sixth in the state, by 35, and on Friday it put 59 on Cedar Valley without conceding. Corner Canyon is 3-1 and just lost by 14 to a team ranked 46th in the country.

We are not moving a board in a Saturday column. But that question is live for the first time this season and Monday has to answer it rather than assume it.

Skyridge is the one nobody is talking about

Skyridge opened the season badly and in a way that was genuinely disappointing to watch. It has now won three in a row, the last of them 24-20 in Henderson against a Nevada top ten team on that team's own field.

That win is aging very well and it has only been a day. It is the only single-digit result anywhere on this board and it came on the road. Three straight after a bad opener is a team that fixed something.

Lone Peak lost by 24 and it was a different night

The margin is the least interesting thing about that game.

Two weeks ago IMG Academy came to that same field and won 59-3. On Friday the Knights were still scoring with 6:41 left while down 31, they sustained drives in the first half, and they made the 10th-ranked team in the country work for stretches of it.

That is not a moral victory and we are not going to dress it up as one. Twenty-four points is twenty-four points, and Lone Peak is 2-2.

It is still what you want to see from a team that is overmatched. They competed for four quarters against the best opponent on their schedule and did not stop when the result was settled. There is more to carry out of that Friday than out of most of the wins further down this board.

Everything else did what it was supposed to

Seven of the eight wins came by 28 or more, all of them against teams we do not rank. Mountain Ridge of Herriman put 59 on Cedar Valley without conceding. West of Salt Lake City won by 48, Timpview by 45, Herriman by 44.

Region play produces scores like that in early September. None of it tells you anything you did not already believe on Tuesday, which is exactly why the games that did tell you something are the ones worth reading twice.

Boards are Monday.