Once at rival high schools, DJ Uiagalelei and JT Daniels set for rematch in college
In less than two weeks, Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte will be as full as humanly and safely possible.
Clemson and Georgia fans, and casual college football fanatics alike will file into the Carolina Panthers’ home stadium expecting an instant classic between the two top-five squads. ESPN College GameDay being in town adds to the bubbling excitement.
It’s the first meeting of the Tigers and Bulldogs following a seven-year matchup hiatus.
If you head west and watch the game in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas of Southern California, you’ll get a different outlook on the teams’ season opener. For the St. John Bosco and Mater Dei communities, it’s about more than just college football.
This is an extension of one of the biggest high school football rivalries in the country with No. 3 Clemson quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei and the No. 5-ranked Bulldogs’ signal caller J.T. Daniels as representatives.
“I think it’s exciting for us here in Southern California because we watched these guys grow up,” said KTLA sports reporter Rahshaun Haylock, who covered both athletes in high school. “We watched JT become a four-year starter at Mater Dei. We watched DJ do tremendous things and kind of have his struggles in the postseason (with St. John Bosco) but then finally able to win that (California Interscholastic Federation) championship as a senior. … What you see those guys do on a national stage, I don’t think anyone’s surprised by it at all.”
West Coast rivals
Daniels and Uiagalelei grew up playing in the middle school feeder football programs of Mater Dei and Bosco, respectively. As national high school powerhouses, the programs that are less than 30 miles from one another have been named the No. 1 team in the country five times in the last 10 years by various outlets like MaxPreps and High School Football America.
Most recently, Calpreps named the Mater Dei Monarchs the top team in the country in 2020-21 after the squad played a limited spring schedule a few months ago. That included a 34-17 win over the St. John Bosco Braves on April 17.
“Typically, throughout the last few years, it’s been in a sense that they’ll play twice, and that first meeting will be for the league championship because they’re in the same league,” Haylock said. “Then the next time they see each other, it will be in the playoffs, in the finals. There’s been a few times where there’s been national championship ramifications on the line. ... It’s the biggest game in Southern California of the year, arguably the biggest game in the nation depending on where those two teams are ranked. As of late, they’ve been up there ranked tremendously high.”
In Jason Negro’s 11 years as the Braves’ head coach, he’s 9-6 against the Monarchs heading into the 2021 season, though Mater Dei, led by longtime head coach Bruce Rollinson, has a firm grasp on the overall series lead.
As fate would have it, Uiagalelei’s first-ever career start came against the Monarchs on Oct. 13, 2017. He had played on the Braves’ freshman team the year prior and moved up varsity as a sophomore. What impressed Negro the most wasn’t Uiagalelei’s size at 6-foot-2, though it did earn the Upland, California native his first college offer from Fresno State University as an eighth-grader.
The best part was how much Uiagalelei had become a student of the game and learned how to capitalize on his size and natural ability.
“He learned the nuances behind the quarterback position, how to do that from a cerebral standpoint,” Negro explained. “It took him a few weeks or a few months, I guess I can say, in order to gain that necessary experience on how to watch film, how to translate what you watch from film onto the practice field and then eventually in games, and by the time we got to the fifth game, or sixth game of the season he had played, just starting to surpass the other kid and took over the job.”
Re-al Mitchell was an Iowa State commit and the Braves’ starting quarterback at the time when Uiagalelei earned the nod four years ago. Uiagalelei, who already held offers from major Division I schools like Alabama and UCLA, made his case by igniting the Braves in a 21-17 comeback victory over St. John’s (Washington, D.C.) on Sept. 23, 2017.
Over at Mater Dei in Orange County, California, JT Daniels was coming off a 2016 season where he helped the Monarchs to a county record-setting 747 points while adding single-season individual records for passing yards (4,849) and touchdown passes (67) as a sophomore. The prolific season earned him the honor of being named the Gatorade state football player of the year.
“Ever since he was younger, he’s kind of been groomed for this,” Haylock said of Daniels, who started as a freshman for Mater Dei. “But, I think DJ was more sort of self-taught, more natural, God-given skills as opposed to JT, who was more or less groomed for the position and taught the ins and outs of the quarterbacking position.”
Initial battle
Daniels lifted his squad to a 6-0 start to begin the 2017 campaign heading into the Oct. 13 contest against the Braves.
Uiagalelei recorded 257 passing yards and two TDs in the air, but Daniels, who totaled 326 passing yards, 97 more on the ground and two scores, led the Monarchs to the promised land.
Mater Dei downed Bosco 31-21, then again almost two months later 49-24 en route to a state title and distinction as best team in the nation. Daniels threw five touchdown passes in the second meeting of the year.
“That was pretty crazy,” Uiagalelei said of his first start. “They (Mater Dei) were the No. 1 team in the nation at the time in high school. It was fun, had a good time out there. Wish we could’ve won. I mean, it was bad we lost, but it’s definitely a cool experience for me to go out there. That was my first game. I loved it.”
The 2017 season ended up being Daniels’ last, leaving high school a year early to attend the University of Southern California. The now-redshirt junior spent two seasons as a Trojan before transferring to Georgia in 2020.
Meanwhile, Uiagalelei eventually got the edge over Mater Dei — two wins, to be exact. The latter came in the 2019 playoffs as the Braves nabbed the state and national championships. The Southern California signal caller left school a semester early, arriving on Clemson’s campus in January 2020.
“Probably two of the most competitive people that I’ve been around,” Negro said of the quarterbacks. “DJ’s probably a little bit more of a powerful type quarterback over JT, but JT is just so incredibly talented in terms of his delivery, the timing of which he throws, just his whole mental makeup. He’s such a competitor. He’s a winner. And, DJ embodies a lot of those same characteristics.”
Rivals once more
Call it deja vu, fate or just plain old good scheduling, but Uiagalelei now must face another Daniels-led rival squad in Georgia, this time as a college sophomore. It’s not the Tiger’s first career collegiate start — he had two last year — but it is the first time he’ll run out as Clemson’s full-time starting quarterback.
Much like Negro did four years ago, Tigers head football coach Dabo Swinney trusts Uiagalelei and believes in his ability as a quarterback for the national powerhouse program.
“Just the day-to-day presence that we see, how he handles himself, how he does things in meetings, his attention to detail in meetings, his questions,” Swinney said. “Those are the types of things that ... really excite you as a coach when you’ve got a guy that you know is as invested as you are.”
On Sept. 4, the blue seats in the Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium will get washed out by a sea of Bulldog red and Clemson orange. The cheers and boos won’t be contained by a man-made decibel measurement as college football returns following a pandemic-riddled season.
The result is yet to be determined, but the journey there means more than meets the eye. Where most will see Bulldogs and Tigers on the field, Southern California knows something different.
“This is not just Clemson-Georgia,” Negro said. “This is a Bosco-Mater Dei showdown.”
Watch Clemson vs Georgia football
Who: Clemson Tigers (0-0) vs. Georgia Bulldogs (1-0)
Where: Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte
When: 7:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 4
TV: ABC
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 6:45 AM with the headline "Once at rival high schools, DJ Uiagalelei and JT Daniels set for rematch in college."
