Pelini mixes old, new for coaching staff

February 8, 2015 at 12:08a.m.

Retaining ties to past important

YOUNGSTOWN

When Youngstown State football coach Eric Wolford was fired in late November, offensive line coach Carmen Bricillo knew two things:

He was under contract at YSU through the end of February.
He was going to be coaching somewhere in 2015.

“Maybe it was going to be at a small school in the middle of nowhere or a great place like here, but I knew I’d be coaching somewhere,” Bricillo said.

So he focused on recruiting. He worked on his offensive line manual. He watched film. In short, he vowed to use the next three months to get better.

“And, obviously, if they decided to retain me, good deal,” Bricillo said. “That’s what I wanted.”

When the Penguins hired Wolford in December 2009, he decided to bring in a completely new staff of assistants. Five years later, four of them remained: Bricillo, offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery, defensive assistant Ron Stoops (who coached safeties and linebackers) and defensive line coach Tom Sims.

When Bo Pelini was hired in mid-December, he took a different approach, both because he had no FCS experience and because his top Nebraska assistants were too expensive to bring along.

Stoops was an obvious choice to be retained because of his Cardinal Mooney connection to Pelini. Same with YSU safeties coach Michael Zordich (a former Mooney assistant who ended up getting hired away by Michigan for $287,000 a year, more than Wolford was making as head coach). Director of football operations Ross Watson (a Fitch graduate) had worked with Pelini at Nebraska, but he chose to leave for Northern Illinois. (Sims was not retained and was hired by Ursuline graduate Pat Narduzzi at Pitt.)

Pelini didn’t have much of a relationship with Montgomery, but they had a lot of mutual friends. Pelini also knew YSU’s biggest strength during the Wolford era was on offense.

“He was a good fit for what I wanted to accomplish,” Pelini said. “It was pretty much a no-brainer if he wanted to stay,”

He did. Montgomery has been coaching since the early 1990s but he’s not a job-hopper. He was an assistant at FCS Chattanooga from 1993-2000 and was at Miami (Ohio) from 2001-08 (the first four as offensive coordinator, the last four as head coach). He then spent one year as Akron’s offensive coordinator before coming to YSU, where he’s overseen some of the most prolific offenses in Penguins history.

“This place has been special to me the last five years,” Montomgery said. “We’ve had some good times and I wanted to keep it going.”

He also wanted Bricillo to stay.

“Anytime I’ve been a coordinator, I always feel like the offensive line coach is the guy I work with the closest,” Montgomery said. “With four of five starters [on the line] coming back, I was very happy to have Carm stay on. He’s been a very big factor over the last five years.”

Not just as a coach, either. Ohio has six Mid-American Conference schools, who scoop up the state’s best mid-level recruits but often stop when they get to the border. Bricillo went to Indiana (Pa.) High (the same high school as tackle Justin Spencer), played offensive line at Duquesne and is well-connected throughout Western Pennsylvania. Over the last five years, he’s helped bring in some of YSU’s best players, particularly on the offensive line.

“I think that’s one of the reasons I was retained,” Bricillo said. “Western Pa. recruits have been good to us.”

Pelini has filled out the rest of his staff with familiar faces. Five were former Nebraska assistants: running backs coach Ron Brown (who had the same role with the Huskers), wide receivers coach Brian Crist (UN’s director of player personnel), tight ends coach Kyle Brey and linebackers coach T.J. Hollowell (both graduate assistants at UN last year) and assistant secondary coach Tim Marlowe, a Cardinal Mooney grad who played wideout under Pelini and was an offensive intern last season.

Defensive backs coach Richard McNutt is the only new coach without a Nebraska connection and he played and coached with YSU president Jim Tressel at Ohio State. (Pelini has yet to hire a defensive line coach and he will likely divvy up the special teams assignments rather than hire one coordinator.)

Montgomery said the offense will basically stay the same — “We’ll probably change a little bit, just like we do every year” — but the defense will focus more on stopping the pass and getting off the field on third defenses, two big weaknesses under Wolford.

“It will certainly be his [Pelini’s] system,” said Stoops, who helped lead Cardinal Mooney to four state championship games as the defense coordinator from 2001-09. “It’s a system that certainly helps in pass defense, which is an area we probably haven’t done as well as we would have liked in the last five years.”

On paper, YSU should have more talent on defense than any point in the last five years. The Penguins return all-conference defensive ends Derek Rivers and Terrell Williams as well as all-conference linebacker Dubem Nwadiogbu. Add in Nebraska transfer Avery Moss on the line and cornerback Kenneth Durden, a South Florida transfer who sat out last season, and there’s reason for optimism.

“We have a chance to have a really good team,” Stoops said. “A really good defense, specifically.”

Of course, there was a lot of optimism during the previous era, too. But unlike five years ago, when Wolford decided to essentially rebuild the program, the Penguins appear poised to take the next step.

“We want to compete for championships,” Pelini said. “We’re all in.”