Inside The Huskies

UW Offers Hotly Pursued Las Vegas Safety

Matai Tagoai has 12 scholarship offers so far and a game to forget.

Dan Raley

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Just a sophomore, a lot of stuff has been coming fast at Matai Tagoai. He's considered a potential 5-star recruit and already holds offers from some of college football's blue bloods.

Yet he's been humbled.

In his last Faith Lutheran High School in Las Vegas, Tagoai and his teammates were destroyed 72-0 by crosstown powerhouse Bishop Gorman, once the schoolboy home for University of Washington wide receiver Rome Odunze and linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio. 

Yet it did nothing to diminish his high regard as a 6-foot-4, 195-pound safety from the Class of 2025 who runs well and doesn't shy from contact.

This past week, Kalen DeBoer's Husky recruiters offered a scholarship to Tagoai, his 12th along with Georgia, USC, Oklahoma, Penn State, Tennessee, Mississippi, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado State and UNLV.

The latter was noteworthy because his father, Willie Tagoai, was a good-sized safety for UNLV in 2006, carrying a 6-foot-3, 205-pound frame.

This Tagoai's Faith Lutheran team was good early, winning its first five games, and six of its first seven, before losing its final three outings. The Bishop Gorman debacle was a playoff game.

However, Tagoai had plenty of football platform to show off his talents. He finished with 73 tackles and 9 pass break-ups and was named as a first-team, All-Southern Nevada selection as this precocious 10th-grader. 

He has two more Faith Lutheran seasons to build on his football reputation and forget that seven-touchdown Bishop Gorman disaster. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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