Between last Tuesday and Saturday, ASU freshman wide receiver Jamal Miles went from imitating Washington quarterback and super-athlete Jake Locker on the scout team, to making a move on game day no player, not even Locker himself, duplicated.

In his first action of the year, Miles, the former Peoria High School standout running back, had two 17-yard receptions against the Huskies.

Miles’ second catch put ASU into field-goal range and would have been a significant play had junior Thomas Weber converted the field goal on the drive.

It wasn’t an ordinary reception. Miles caught a short hitch route, planted his left foot and executed a pinpoint pirouette around the defender, leaving the Husky lock-legged.

“It was nothing that I practiced, it just came out,” Miles said.

ASU coach Dennis Erickson gushed about Miles in the postgame press conference and again on Monday.

“To me, he is a guy that’s a game breaker,” Erickson said. “He’s got unusual speed and shiftiness. The two catches that he got, he broke tackles on both of them.”

Miles was considered an option for a redshirt given ASU’s depth at wide receiver, but with senior Chris McGaha limited due to illness, and junior LeQuan Lewis moving back to the secondary for the week because of junior cornerback Omar Bolden’s injury, Miles was given a shot.

Bye-bye, scout team.

“We’ve got to continue to get him involved in our offense,” Erickson said. “I made a decision last week to pull him out of redshirt. Looking at where we are at, what we’re trying to develop and to try and get a little more explosiveness and big plays for our offense. From watching him in fall camp and then watching him on the scout team, he had been doing a lot of things against our defense at running back, so I decided that he could help us in the last seven games to make some plays. The two plays he made in that game were huge.”

The second surprise-receiving star Saturday was Miles’ cousin and former teammate at Peoria, T.J. Simpson. Simpson, a sophomore, had a 32-yard touchdown reception in the back of the end zone from senior receiver Kyle Williams and a 30-yard reverse run.

“He is my MVP,” Erickson said. “No seriously, you talk about a guy who doesn’t get all the accolades that he should. He plays every single position, goes in when we ask him to go to do things. [Simpson] makes plays and gets better all the time.”

For Miles, having Simpson around is more than just another older player to emulate.

“Makes me feel a little more comfortable knowing that I know somebody out here who can teach me the game, someone I can go to when I need help,” Miles said.

So who is faster, Simpson or Miles?

“[Simspon] is the fastest player, next to his cousin [Miles],” Erickson said.

And Miles?

“I say I’m faster, but he thinks he is faster,” the freshman said. “We raced in high school. My freshman year, he beat me and sophomore year I won, but he hurt his hamstring.”

Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu.