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WEST VALLEY CITY — Pleasant Grove quarterback Carson Rasmussen escaped the pocket and looked up field. He motioned his receiver to release to an open spot on the field, and then he let it all fly.
Soon after, Rasmussen was celebrating a 58-yard touchdown strike.
That celebration proved to be a bit premature, though. There was a flag on the field, which voided what might have been Rasmussen best play of the night. Fortunately for the Vikings, he had plenty more in him.
Rasmussen accounted for six total touchdowns as Pleasant Grove rolled past Granger 44-21 Friday in West Valley City Friday.
"He can run, he can throw, he's so shifty," Pleasant Grove coach Taylor Walkenhorst said.
He'll likely get no arguments from the Lancer defense, either. Rasmussen threw for 178 yards and four touchdowns, including a 62-yarder to Bronco Winterton in the second quarter that gave the Vikings a 28-7 lead going into halftime.
Rasmussen also added 32 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. His 5-yard touchdown run at the beginning of the second half put Pleasant Grove up by a commanding four touchdowns.
"He runs the zone read well, he runs RPOs, he's got a great feel for what the defense is doing," Walkenhorst said.
Walkenhorst said he was impressed with how much studying his junior signal caller did leading up to Friday. By game time, he had honed in on what Granger liked to do against certain formations, and that allowed for the star showing.
He was far from alone on that level of focus.
You might not have known it from the score, but Pleasant Grove was disappointed with how they played in its 40-14 win over Weber last week.
"We didn't play great against Weber," Walkenhorst said. "We didn't have intensity. We didn't have great effort and great technique, and so I was really worried in this game that it would be the same thing."
But that was far from the case
Pleasant Grove scored on its first drive of the game, and the Vikings defense then set an early tone by stopping Granger on a fourth-down try. A few plays later, Pleasant Grove was back in the end zone.
"We were a lot more focused this week. We got special focus, special intensity, and then we played relentlessly with great effort and great technique, which is what we wanted to do," Walkenhorst said.
Granger answered those early scores with a 22-yard strike from BYU commit quarterback Carson Su'esu'e to Landon Figueroa. Pleasant Grove, though, scored the next four touchdowns to pull away. Su'esu'e threw for 264 yards and three touchdowns in the loss.
"They've got a special quarterback, runs the ball well, throws the ball well. There's a reason that dude's a three-star (recruit)," Walkenhorst said. "He's a great quarterback, caused some problems for us defensively, but the kids we stayed within the game plan."
It helped that Pleasant Grove had a pretty good quarterback on their side, too.
