Mo 'Purifies' SportsCenter, Nebraska
by Jackie Christensen, 11/6/2006
Little Mo might have to change his name to Big Time Mo.
For the second time in 2006, a Humboldt-Del Norte Conference athlete has been featured on ESPN’s SportsCenter’s Top-10 plays.
Eureka High graduate Maurice Purify, who signed with the Division I Nebraska Cornhuskers as a wide receiver at the end of last football season, threw a 28-yard touchdown pass on a trick play Saturday in the Huskers’ 34-20 win against Missouri, which landed him at No. 9 of Sportscenter’s Top-10 Saturday night.
Fortuna basketball player Clayton Hunter was featured in January at No. 2, after he sank two half-court buzzer beaters in the same game.
“It’s a play we have practiced for about four or five weeks,” Purify said of his reverse-pass touchdown. “I just went around the outside, thinking about selling the fake. I wasn’t going to throw it at first, I saw a guy over the top, but then I saw (wide receiver Terrence Nunn) get loose, and I just threw it to the back of the end zone. He made a great catch. It was a better catch than pass really.”
Purify is currently second on the Huskers’ receiving corps in receptions with 25, but is leading Nebraska with 503 yards, six touchdowns (the next closest receiver has three) and 50.3 yards per game.
Purify made his third start of the season on Saturday, and on top of delivering the touchdown pass, Purify added two catches in the game, one for a 7-yard touchdown in the second quarter.
“My role is getting bigger and bigger,” Purify said. “I’m becoming a go-to guy and they just count on me to make plays.”
Although Purify’s playing time has been increasing each week, things started out a little slower than he had expected.
On Sept. 16, when the Huskers played the University of Southern California, which featured Purify’s Logger teammate Rey Maualuga, Purify didn’t even play in the game.
Frustrated by the fact his mom was in attendance, Purify questioned his decision to play for Nebraska.
“If you would have asked me after USC, I probably would have said I wanted to transfer” Purify said. “I thought it was a special day for me since my mom was there, and I was angry about that. Then I just went and talked with (offensive coordinator Jay Norvell) and asked why I wasn’t playing. He told me (head coach Bill Callihan) didn’t want to put anybody on the field who didn’t know what they were doing. I told him I knew what I was doing, then they started throwing me in. Since then my role has been getting bigger and bigger, and now I’m starting.”
In the end, Purify admits the time spent becoming familiar with the program before being thrown into the fire might have helped him in the long run.
“I think it was good to make me wait, to make sure I knew what I was doing,” he said. “They didn’t want me in there before I was ready because they didn’t want me to lose confidence if things didn’t go well right away.”
The Huskers travel to Texas A&M on Saturday.
