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How Jacob Manu went from under-recruited prospect to heart of Arizona’s young defense

In his pursuit of Tetairoa McMillan and other standout offensive players at Anaheim’s Servite High School, Jedd Fisch had quite a few conversations with those prospects about how they important they would be to Arizona’s rebuild.

There was another topic that kept coming up in their talks: Jacob Manu.

“Every time I talked to T-Mac and Noah (Fifita) and Keyan (Burnett) they kept saying ‘hey now, we got a linebacker here, we got a linebacker here,’” Fisch recalled Friday after Arizona’s Territorial Cup win over ASU, a victory sealed by a pair of big plays in the fourth quarter by one of the more unheralded members of the UA’s stellar 2022 recruiting class.