The Arizona media relations office brought in several football players for group interviews Monday. The player who spoke the loudest, most authoritatively … the one who was most at ease?

Nick Foles at Monday's press conference/TucsonCitizen.com photo

That’s the way you would want it, and for all the good stuff he is doing on the field, that’s only part of the story. He has been a starter for only four games, but this is his team.

“Nick is a leader,” said senior receiver Delashaun Dean. “Probably one of the best I have seen come through here. He keeps everybody loose. He’s just a guy you want to have as your general out there on the field. We just want to rally behind him.”

UA outside receivers coach Dave Nichol was at Baylor when he tried to lure Foles from Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. “I wrote him a million letters,” Nichol said, “which he never replied to.”

I asked Nichol what was it about Foles that he really liked in high school. “Just real sharp. His coach would say that he was the leader of the basketball team and he would organize seven-on-seven drills in the summer. Those guys at the quarterback position, that is what you look for. Obviously, he is big and he can throw it, but he just kind of has that savviness that says, ‘I’m a leader.’”

Foles said he didn’t remember those million letters from Nichol, but he did say that after he sent his letter-of-intent to Michigan State in February 2007, his dad told him that Baylor had come through with a scholarship offer for football and basketball. Before you get any ideas, realize that coach Sean Miller’s basketball team is plenty deep and Foles has absolutely no inclination to do any walk-on work with UA hoops, as quarterback Ortege Jenkins did about a decade ago.

“When you play quarterback at this level, it’s hard,” Foles said. “In the offseason, that’s your chance to become better — work on timing with the guys, go through film cut-ups. At this level, with this offense, you have to be studying your butt off in the offseason. So that is what I’m going to be doing.” …

Read more about Foles at our partner wildaboutazcats.com’s weekly Nothing but the Notes column.

The hallmark of this Arizona defense is speed over size, and that is especially applicable at linebacker, where the Wildcats have two outside ‘backers who are listed at 5-foot-11 (Xavier Kelley and Sterling Lewis) and a middle linebacker, Vuna Tuihalamaka, dubiously listed at 6-2. They are not major prospects from an NFL perspective. “I think maybe the knock on our linebackers this year is our overall size,” said linebackers coach Tim Kish. “I think everybody in the NFL would love to have 6-3, 6-4 linebackers because of the size of the offensive linemen they’re competing against. But nobody plays with as much heart as these three guys do. They’re students of the game, and I think all three will get a look (at the next level).” …

As far as linebackers of the future, Arizona is hosting Josh Shirley on an official visit this weekend. Shirley, from Fontana (Calif.) Kaiser High School, is rated the 117th-best prospect in the nation, and the seventh-best outside linebacker, as rated by Rivals.com. He has offers from a slew of schools, including USC, Tennessee, Notre Dame and Miami and Washington (which he visited in September). Another key recruit visiting this weekend is running back Jordon James of Corona, Calif. He is rated the 19th-best recruit in the country by ESPN.com, although he’s “only” No. 91 on the Rivals.com list. The Wildcats could end up being a finalist for James, who still has to visit UCLA but has said he could decide by the end of the month. … UA’s quarterback commit for next season — Matt Brown of Allen (Texas) High — is expected to be in town. In a 52-28 win over Plano East on Oct. 30, he threw for 260 yards and ran for 148. … For more football recruiting news for this weekend, check out Chris Bonney’s story at Wildcat Sports Report. …

In UA’s most recent game, Arizona guard Herman Hall went up against UCLA junior defensive tackle Brian Price, who is having an All-American kind of season, with a conference-best 12 tackles for loss, including four sacks. Has Price been Hall’s toughest competition of the season? Nope. “The toughest guy I have gone against this year is No. 54 from Oregon State,” Hall said. “He’s a big, strong kid — and a nice player, too.” No. 54 is Stephen Paea, who does fall into the underrated category. … Could Foles have a big game Saturday against Washington State? Consider that the Cougars have allowed five of eight opponents to gain at least 500 yards (and another put up 481). “Washington State is going to throw everything they have at us,” Foles said. “For a lot of teams, it’s easy to overlook games like this, but this game means as much as any other.” …

How good has Arizona been in the past two years? The Wildcats are 16-8 overall and 11-6 in the Pac-10 since Oct. 27, 2007 — which is a pretty remarkable turnaround since coach Mike Stoops likely was a whisker away from being fired before the Cats turned it around by rallying to win at Washington in late October 2007. Looking at how other Pac-10 teams have done in their past 17 conference games, USC has 14 victories, Oregon State has 13, Oregon has 12 and Arizona is next with its 11 wins. “We have played some awfully good football the last two years,” Stoops said.

Other national reading:
George Schroeder, the very fine columnist for the Eugene Register-Guard, wrote a piece for SI.com Thursday: Under-the-radar Arizona sitting pretty in Rose Bowl race

And there was this from Steve Megargee from Rivals.com: Arizona quietly making a move in the Pac-10

Anthony Gimino can be reached at anthonygimino (at) gmail.com

Arizona’s 2008 football recruiting class was ranked 39th nationally by Rivals.com and Scout.com. Eh. The Wildcats would like to live in a better neighborhood, but you know what coaches always say — you need three or four years to truly evaluate a class.

Phillip Garcia was part of a 2008 junior college recruiting class that is providing five key players for the Wildcats/Tucson Citizen photo

In UA’s case, let’s chop that time frame down to about 18 months.

Arizona is 4-2 at the halfway point of the 2009 season, and, barring an upset, will go to 6-2 overall and 4-1 in the Pac-10, which would make the Wildcats a legit contender for the conference title (and the program’s first Rose Bowl … but you knew that).

The Cats get UCLA on Saturday and then, after a bye, Washington State. Both games are at home. Those two opponents are a combined 0-7 in the Pac-10.

One of the reasons the Wildcats are doing so well is that 2008 recruiting class. The UA signed 23 players in that class, and then added another guy late in spring. You might have heard of him. Quarterback Nick Foles, a transfer from Michigan State.

The Wildcats would be in a bad way (or at least a not-as-good way) if the coaches hadn’t successfully plugged holes with junior college transfers. After all, that’s why you recruit those guys in the first place.

It’s often hit and miss with junior college recruits, but Arizona “hit” with offensive linemen Mike Diaz, Phillip Garcia and Herman Hall, and linebackers Vuna Tuihalamaka and Sterling Lewis. Not only are they starting-level players (a combined 21 starts this season), they successfully bridged the recruiting gap so UA could develop younger recruits who will be ready to take over next season.

The only JC transfer miss was offensive lineman J’Marcus Webb. He was the highest-rated of the bunch but was the only member of the entire class to not qualify. He is now at lower-division West Texas. Anyway, it’s a blessing to hit so well on five of six junior college recruits.

Among the high school kids in that class, Arizona is already getting key production from running backs Keola Antolin and Greg Nwoko. At receiver, David Douglas (25 catches for 267 yards and two touchdowns) and Juron Criner (23 catches for 301 yards and three touchdowns) are key members of the rotation.

Robert Golden is the starting strong safety. Vaughn Dotsy was starting at right guard before suffering a concussion and is back at least as a key member of the playing rotation.

It’s hard to know what to make of the future of quarterback Matt Scott, who was supplanted as the starter after three games by Foles, who shows no intention of giving it back. Foles, because of his late transfer, wasn’t factored into the UA’s class ranking in 2008 … which shows one of the inherent flaws of banking opinions on recruiting rankings.

Other members of the class, such as OL Trace Biskin, LB R.J. Young and DT Jowyn Ward, seem ready to emerge next season.

There’s another trend at work here.

Call it the Rise of the Two-Star Recruits.

(That’s another reason to not get all aflutter over football recruiting rankings.)

USC gets all five- and four-star recruits, and good for them. You’d rather take your chances with those kind of guys than a team filled with two-star prospects. Arizona’s recruits tend to be of the three-star variety, with a few bigger stars mixed in.

But take a look at the players signed by UA coach Mike Stoops who were rated only two stars by either Rivals.com or Scout.com, or both:

2004
DL Yaniv Barnett
OL Joe Longacre
DB Dominic Patrick
CB Antoine Cason

2005
LB Spencer Larsen (coming back from a church mission)

2006
DT Lolomana Mikaele

2007
CB Trevin Wade
WR Bug Wright

2008
RB Greg Nwoko
WR Juron Criner
WR David Douglas
OL Herman Hall

That’s a major-award winner and a first-round draft pick (Cason), a first-team all-conference linebacker and valuable 2008 NFL rookie (Spencer Larsen), a 40-game starter on the offensive line (Longacre) … and several players from 2006 to 2008 who look to be significant contributors for a few more years.

When I was recently doing a story on Wade, I asked defensive coordinator Mark Stoops about finding those kind of gems.

“Certainly, some kids get so much hype and so much recruitment that it’s undeserved,” Stoops said. “And other kids, you find that they’re just good ball players.

“We don’t have the bells and whistles around here to go get a bunch of four- and five-star recruits. It’s just not going to happen. So we have to do a great job of evaluation and do a great job of developing.

“We’re always going to go after them (the four- and five-star recruits) — and not just because they are four- and five-star guys. We’re going to recruit the best players we can get. But there are a lot of good programs out there, and we have our obstacles that we must overcome.”

Getting back to the original point … it seems as if Arizona overcame everything just fine in its modestly ranked but high-performing 2008 recruiting class.