FORT COLLINS — It was big-time, bright-lights Florida high school football, with Orlando’s Dr. Phillips High facing Lake Mary in 2010. Each team had a star running back — senior Dee Hart of Dr. Phillips, one of the most highly sought prospects in the country, and junior Treyous Jarrells of Lake Mary.
“I’ll never forget it: The first play of the game, he popped like an 80-yarder on us,” Jarrells said Monday of Hart. “He took it all the way to the house. And after the game, I hollered at him, ‘Good run!’
“I said, ‘You’re going to ‘Bama?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to ‘Bama next year.’ I was like, ‘Good luck,’ and that was the last time I talked to him as far as football until I got here.”
After Kapri Bibbs left CSU to move to the NFL and Donnell Alexander departed from the program during spring ball, the Rams were faced with replacing their top two running backs from 2013.
When preseason practice opened, the two former Florida prep opponents were with the Rams — Hart after transferring from Alabama, where he hadn’t been able to break into the running back rotation; and Jarrells arriving from California’s Grossmont College in El Cajon, Calif.
Going into Saturday’s game at San Jose State, Hart and Jarrells have been an effective combination for the 7-1 Rams, with Hart rushing for 690 yards on 109 carries, and Jarrells, despite missing two games with a sore knee, gaining 340 yards on 62 carries. Hart (5-foot-9, 190) takes a pounding as a one-cut runner who isn’t shy about taking on defenders. Jarrells (5-7, 185) is more sneaky, but his ability to also move a pile before going down is striking.
“We came out here not knowing that we were going to be here together, and it just brought us together more,” Jarrells said. “We see each other as brothers, so we want each other to do good. We feed off each others’ energy.”
He added that the relationship “has gotten stronger and stronger. It started back in camp. I remember the first day I saw him. We walked up to each other and I said: ‘I remember you. We played against you and Dr. Phillips.’ From there, we talked every day.”
Jarrells had started out at Wofford in South Carolina but didn’t play in the FCS program there before moving on to Grossmont. He was a junior college All-California choice as a sophomore and obtained his two-year degree in behavioral and social sciences, and didn’t sign on with CSU until last spring — but in time to be part of a team now on the verge of cracking the top 25.
“From Day One, Coach (Jim McElwain) has been preaching it to us,” Jarrells said. ” ‘This is a special team, special year.’ So the locker room believed from the very beginning that we were going to be something special. We just didn’t know how special, but as time went on, we found out how special we are.”
Footnotes. CSU quarterback Garrett Grayson, who was 18-for-21 for 390 yards and five touchdowns in the win over Wyoming, was named the Mountain West offensive player of the week. … San Jose State’s defensive coordinator is Greg Robinson, who held that job for the Broncos’ back-to-back Super Bowl championship teams in the 1997 and 1998 NFL seasons. … Kickoff for CSU’s next home game, against Hawaii on Nov. 8, has been set for 5 p.m.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
