The SPIN Cycle: Buford Needed a Third Quarter, Waxahachie Scored Twice Without the Ball, and Cardinal Newman's County Streak Died in the Mud

Thursday is not usually the night. This week it was, and the reason is a calendar.

Every Clark County School District team in southern Nevada moved off Friday because of Rosh Hashanah, which is why, by the Review-Journal's count, twenty one Nevada games landed at once and why four ranked teams played on a night nobody had them circled for. Add the marquee interstate games that were already booked for Thursday and the result was a full slate two days early: eleven games involving teams on a SPIN board, three of them ranked against ranked.

Here is all of it.

TOP OF THE CYCLE

No. 5 Buford 18, No. 24 Miami Central 7. The SPIN National Game of the Week did what the best of these games do, which is refuse to settle. Silas Nuckles put Buford ahead with a 29 yard touchdown run in the first quarter. James Perrone, the Pittsburgh commit, answered with a four yard run that tied it 7-7 and that is where it stood at the half at Phillip Beard Stadium.

The third quarter decided it. DJ Hunter threw the go ahead touchdown to Owen Muraski from seven yards out, and Miami Central never got even again. Perrone finished 8 of 20 for 140 yards. Buford is 3-0. Miami Central takes its first loss at 2-1, and at No. 24 it is the highest ranked team to lose on any SPIN board Thursday.

Eleven points made it the tightest of Thursday's three ranked against ranked games.

No. 42 Waxahachie 44, No. 85 Guyer 30. Waxahachie scored two touchdowns without running an offensive play. Jayvon Moore took a fumble back 80 yards. Jordan Smith took a kickoff back 97. In a game where Guyer's quarterback threw for 246 yards and its kicker made three field goals, that is the entire difference and then some.

Taylen Strange carried 23 times for 101 yards and three touchdowns, and Jerry Meyer III went 17 of 24 for 143 as Waxahachie moved to 3-0 at C.H. Collins Athletic Complex. Guyer did not go quietly. Carter Morgan hit DJ Reese seven times for 147 yards, Bam Moss returned a fumble 37 yards, Jayden Thomas broke a 60 yard touchdown run, and Andrew Johnson was 3 of 4 on field goals from 27, 28 and 44. It was not enough. Guyer is 2-1. The individual lines here are the Denton Record-Chronicle's, which was the only newsroom in the building with a full box.

No. 41 West Boca Raton 24, No. 100 Cardinal Newman 7. It rained hard before kickoff and the field never recovered, which suited the team that wanted to hit people. Trey Moran ran for a touchdown and threw one to Anderson Gracilien. Larry Morgan III, committed to South Florida, picked off a pass in the first half. Wally Harmon added a 42 yard field goal.

Cardinal Newman's only answer was a long second half touchdown run from Janarro Sumpter. West Boca Raton is 3-0. Cardinal Newman is 3-1, and according to the Palm Beach Post this is the first time the school has lost to a Palm Beach County opponent since 2021, a county run of twenty games and something on the order of five years.

Utah No. 4 West 56, Brighton 13. West went to Cottonwood Heights and had the game finished before most of the crowd had settled. Twenty one points in the first quarter, four touchdown passes from Kamden Lopati, and three touchdowns from Mani Tu'uao, two through the air and one on the ground. West is 5-0, and its two tightest games, 20-14 over Arbor View of Nevada and 21-13 over Archbishop Riordan of California, are both already behind it. Griffin Matsumori threw touchdown passes to Cole Christensen and Rodrigo Queiroz for Brighton, which is 1-4 and has now lost four in a row. Those lines come from KSL Sports, the only outlet that filed a box.

Arizona No. 8 Desert Mountain 65, Mountain View 0. This is the number of the night. Desert Mountain drove down from Scottsdale, played on the other team's field, and won by 65. That is the widest margin anywhere on the board, thirteen points clear of the next one. Desert Mountain is 3-0 and has now won by 62, 28 and 65.

Arizona No. 7 Desert Edge 46, Notre Dame Prep 7. Desert Edge is 3-0 and has allowed seven points all season. Twenty to nothing over Cactus Shadows, fifty two to nothing over Cienega, and now this. The seven Notre Dame Prep managed are the first anyone has scored on them.

SoCal No. 2 Sierra Canyon 52, Saint Louis 0. Our No. 8 nationally won by 52 at Chatsworth. That is the whole of what has been published anywhere. No outlet in either market has filed a game story, the CIF Southern Section has posted no result, Hawaii's scoring service is blank, and neither school has put anything on its own site. We are carrying the score because two independent publishers print it. We are not filling in the rest, because nobody has reported it and we do not invent the parts we cannot see.

THE DOWNSIDE

Miami Central, No. 24. First loss of the season and the most expensive one on the board. Held to seven points and to a single scoring drive. Nothing about 2-1 is a crisis. Losing at Buford is not how a team falls off a board.

Guyer, No. 85. Two return touchdowns against you is not a scheme problem, it is a night. Guyer outgained the moment and lost the game, and its record is now 2-1. Note for anyone reading our own board this morning: the live Power 100 still prints Guyer at 3-0. That is wrong, it is our error, and it is being fixed.

Cardinal Newman, No. 100. A county streak that had held since 2021 ended in the mud. Cardinal Newman is still 3-1 and still a top hundred team. It is also out of the conversation about being untouchable in Palm Beach County, which is a different thing than being good.

Brighton. Down 21-0 before the first quarter ended, beaten 56-13, now 1-4 with four straight losses. The schedule has been unkind. Weber, Ridgeline, Crimson Cliffs and now the state's No. 4 is a brutal month for anybody.

Mountain View of Marana. Sixty five to nothing at home. There is no soft way to write that and no reason to try.

Saint Louis of Honolulu. Shut out for the third consecutive week. Forty two to nothing at Mililani, forty one to nothing at IMG Academy, and fifty two to nothing at Sierra Canyon. MaxPreps carries Saint Louis at 0-4. A program with Saint Louis's history does not stay here, but right now the scoreboard has not shown them a point since August 8.

COMING UP

The good day that was not a great day. Four of these are Nevada, and all four are teams whose next two weeks will say more than Thursday did.

Nevada No. 3 Palo Verde 38, Durango 18. Cooper Roberts went 16 of 20 for 201 yards and three touchdowns, X'Zavier McZeal caught four for 78 and two scores, and Palo Verde is 4-0. Unbeaten in September is a real thing. Unbeaten in September against this schedule is a question the rest of the month will answer.

Nevada No. 9 Liberty 42, Desert Oasis 0. Madden Delacruz threw for 230 yards and two touchdowns and the second half ran on a clock that did not stop. A shutout is a shutout. It arrived on a night when Liberty needed something uncomplicated, and it was.

Nevada No. 10 Coronado 46, Desert Pines 10. Coronado is 3-1 and this was the cleanest of its four results so far.

Nevada No. 6 Foothill 35, Las Vegas 28. A seven point win at home over a team that is 1-3. Foothill got the result. It did not get a statement, and after the month it has had, a statement is what it was looking for.

The Palo Verde, Liberty and Foothill lines above are carried on the Las Vegas Review-Journal alone. No second newsroom in southern Nevada has filed on them yet and MaxPreps has not refreshed. We will upgrade them the moment somebody else prints them.

THE FULL BOARD

Ranks are the SPIN Power 100 and the regional boards published September 7.

WHAT TONIGHT LOOKS LIKE

Thursday was the appetizer. Friday has Centennial of Corona at Mater Dei, Allen at Southlake Carroll, Baylor School at Trinity, and Mountain View of Mesa at Centennial of Peoria, which is Arizona's sixth ranked team going to its fourth, both unbeaten. Eight of the Arizona top ten sat out Thursday and all eight play tonight.

We will be sweeping all of it.