Go-To Guys to Go at It Once Again

It was almost a year ago, the Southern Section Division V football championship game, the last time Carson Palmer and DeShaun Foster played against each other.

Palmer, the quarterback for Santa Margarita High School, completed 19 of 30 passes for 413 yards and five touchdowns. Foster, the tailback for Tustin High, ran for 378 yards, scored six touchdowns and played nearly every defensive down as a safety. Final score: Santa Margarita 55, Tustin 42.

And 11 1/2 months later, the game is still alive in the heads of Palmer and Foster. Foster will practically start sweating and cramping up just thinking of how exhausted he was at the end. Palmer still feels a little bad about how Foster was crying and Palmer couldn’t stop smiling when he went to Foster for a postgame handshake.

But, and how cool is this, these two true freshmen will play against each other Saturday in another game of monumental importance. Palmer will be the starting quarterback for USC. Foster will be one of the main running backs for UCLA.

Who’dda thunk it? Rarely in this day of redshirting, when nearly every freshman in a major collegiate program sits on the sidelines his rookie year to gain weight and strength and smarts, do real freshmen play such key roles.

“I was just hoping to make the travel squad,” Foster says.

“I never expected to be starting,” Palmer says. “I just hoped to contribute.”

Here they are, though, starting, contributing, who knows, maybe even starring in one of the biggest collegiate games of the season.

Yet both these kids were thrilled to pieces to talk about last year, to speak of the glory and the guts and the sheer excitement that each provided the sellout crowd last December at Cal State Fullerton.

Tustin Coach Myron Miller says the game was voted the No. 1 high school game in the country last year by a prep magazine, and Miller certainly would not argue. He remembers that Tustin was a pretty heavy underdog, that the Tillers had lost to Santa Margarita in the playoffs a year earlier, and that Foster had gained maybe 40 yards in that game. He remembers that Santa Margarita had given up about 700 yards total rushing for the season. All the other memories? They’re sort of jumbled up in his head.

“We took the ball on the opening drive and scored,” Miller says. “Then they scored. Then we scored. Then they scored. We ended up scoring on six of our eight possessions in the game. They scored on all nine.

“It was two great athletes going after each other. When DeShaun would get hit, for whatever reason, their linemen could not tackle him. And it’s not like they didn’t know what was coming. We threw two passes in the game and one was to DeShaun.”

Jim Hartigan, Santa Margarita’s coach, said it was “two great football players, two great football teams.”

So discouraged did Hartigan become at his team’s inability to stop Foster, four times he had his team go for a first down on a fourth-down play rather than punt and give the ball back to Foster.

So tired was Foster from playing both ways and with such intensity that he had broken free once for what would have been about a 50-yard run and then, just past midfield, crumpled to the ground, not tackled by humans but, instead, by cramping pain.

Miller and his Tustin team couldn’t do much to stop Palmer either. “We tried it all,” Miller said. “Zones, man coverage, mixed coverages, we tried everything. And I think Carson had two or three balls dropped or he would have had even more.”

Foster says that all he kept thinking about Palmer was, “Man, he stood back there and it was like he had a cannon for an arm and every ball was perfect.”

Of Foster, Palmer says, “He was just unstoppable. That’s all. I was yelling at our defense to stop him, but that was just useless.”

The two opponents became friends while playing together on the California team in last summer’s Shrine game, and each seems to have tremendous respect for the other.

“DeShaun isn’t just a great player,” Palmer says, without the prompting of a question. “He is also a great person. No one has anything bad to say about DeShaun.”

Palmer will be making his third start for the Trojans. Since Palmer took over for Mike Van Raaphorst, USC has averaged 374.5 yards and 33.5 points a game. Before Palmer was the starter, USC was averaging 345.3 yards and 29.2 points. Those extra four points might make a difference Saturday.

Foster may not technically be the starter, but he leads the Bruins in rushing with 447 yards and he sat out two games because of a sprained knee.

And if you expect either of these rookies to be nervous about this huge game, well, don’t.

“It’s kind of amazing,” Foster says. “Here we go again, the two of us, in a game that means so much for both teams. I think it will be just like last year. I’m excited.”

Says Palmer, “I kind of can’t believe that DeShaun and I are going at it again and in the same situation. The game means a lot to us both.”

So let the defenses beware. Big game. Big pressure. Palmer and Foster are used to producing big numbers.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com