FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE) – Fresno State quarterback Mikey Keene grew up about a half hour south of the Arizona State campus in Chandler, Ariz., so Saturday’s showdown between the Bulldogs and Sun Devils will be a homecoming of sorts for him.

But at practice this week, the redshirt sophomore, who transferred to Fresno State from Central Florida before the start of the spring semester, downplayed the importance of Saturday’s matchup for him.

“Yeah, I mean, honestly, just another game for me,” said Keene, who has completed 65.1 percent of his passes, with six touchdowns and only two interceptions, in helping the Bulldogs get off to a 2-0 start. “There will be some things that are cool, to have some people that haven’t seen me play since high school. But all of that is just outside noise. In all honesty, I’m just focused on my preparation for this week, and getting ready to face a tough opponent in ASU.”

Keene put up impressive statistical numbers and never lost a game in two years as the starting quarterback for Chandler High School, leading the Wolves to back-to-back Open Division Arizona state titles in 2019 and 2020. The Open Division is the elite division in Arizona, but despite all that, Keene didn’t get an offer from Arizona State or Arizona out of high school.

It’s not something Keene, who is only 5-foot-11, worried about at all.

“I understood that going to a Division I program was gonna be a super-tough thing,” said Keene, who did get 15 scholarship offers out of high school according to 247sports.com, but only one from a power-five Division I school (Iowa State). “When they (ASU and Arizona) didn’t recruit me, I just kind of dealt with it, and rolled with the punches, and whoever recruited me, that’s what I went with, so that’s how that went down.”

Keene’s high school head coach at Chandler, Rick Garretson, is planning on attending Saturday night’s game. In a recent interview, he talked about the things that made Mikey such a great high school quarterback.

“Big-time leader, not afraid to be a leader, which is easier said than done at times right,” said Garretson. “Great thrower, great student of the game, and he’s just got ‘it’, you know, and people follow him, and that’s why he was undefeated here (at Chandler). That’s why he had success at Central Florida, that’s why he beat Purdue.”

Keene says one of his good buddies from high school, Tate Romney, is a linebacker for the Sun Devils, and a couple other former high school teammates play on the offensive side at Arizona State, which had Keene reminiscing a little bit about his high school days this week.

“Yeah, it was a super competitive environment,” said Keene about his days at Chandler High School. “I’d say that it’s very similar to the Trinity League in So Cal. We had the Open Division that came into effect my junior year, so Arizona high school football is a very unique place to play. So, I had a great time playing in Arizona, and the exposure that we got playing against national teams every single year.”