Warde Manuel mum on coaching staff changes

Shortly before the start of the UConn/Louisville women's basketball game at the XL Center last night I caught up with UConn director of athletics Warde Manuel.

Considering the news that broke earlier in the day that George DeLeone was relinquishing his offensive coordinator position, it wasn't too hard to figure out what was the first subject broached with him. However, Manuel declined to comment on either the move of DeLeone to associate head coach while remaining the offensive line coach and the departure of defensive coordinator Don Brown to Boston College.


"I don't want to comment on that until we have our coordinators," Manuel said. "I’ll comment when we have hire our coordinators."

I was able to ask Manuel about a conversation I heard he had with the team shortly after the end of the regular season. I had heard that he lit into the team telling them to get with the program or head for the exits and that head coach Paul Pasqualoni has his full support.

Manuel said he did meet with the team but the conversation did not transpire the way I described above.

"I talked to them but it wasn’t because I felt like I needed to stand up for the coaches and I think they knew that," Manuel said. "It wasn’t a question about that but it was making sure they understood that we need to continue to work, we need to continue to get better and depending on their effort, the coaches’ effort, everybody in the room’s effort including mine that we have to put ourselves in the right position to do the right things and be prepared to have success."

Coming off back to back losing seasons, I was curious if he viewed this upcoming season even more pivotal than normal.

"Every game and everything we do is designed and should be designed to win and have success and when we don’t have a winning record we have to work even harder, work smarter and put ourselves in position in the right positions to do the right things to make success happen," Manuel said. "Every season is important and when you don’t win whether it is one season, two seasons you have to get down to the work and make things happen."

Since I periodically see reports out of Michigan with Michigan AD Dave Brandon continuing to hope that next year's UConn/Michigan game gets moved out of Rentschler Field and into a larger stadium, I asked Manuel for his take on the subject.

"It hasn’t been raised by their AD and I am not changing my perspective," Manuel said.

Finally, he spoke about having eight members of the 2012 squad playing in postseason all-star games as Nick Williams returned a pair of kickoffs for 37 yards in the Casino Del Sol College All-Star Classic last week, Jory Johnson and Ryan Griffin are playing in the Raycom College Football All-Star Classic on Saturday while Sio Moore will be playing in the East-West Shrine Game on Saturday as well. On Jan. 26 the trio of Dwayne Gratz, Trevardo Williams and Blidi Wreh-Wilson are taking part in the Senior Bowl and Michael Smith compete in the Texas vs. The Nation event on Feb. 2.

"That I love, it always wonderful when any of our guys go and to have eight is a real testament to talent we have on the squad and the potential that we continue to have," Manuel said. "We just have to fulfill the potential that we have because we have talent and we have a lot of guys with ability, a lot of high quality, high character kids. They’ve been through a lot and never stopped playing for UConn and their teammates. It is a testament of who they are and how they were raised, how they carried themselves and I will always be proud of this senior class."

Defensive coordinator Don Brown heading to BC

The feeling was that there could be a new coordinator in place for the UConn football team in 2013 but nobody thought defensive coordinator Don Brown would be the first one to go.

As first reported by Bruce Feldman of CBS Sports, Brown is headed to BC after two successful seasons running the defense at UConn. The Huskies finished the season ranked 10th in total defense among FBS teams while ranking seven in rushing defense and 13th tackles for losses.

Brown has an impressive resume finding success wherever he's been. Eight of his 10 stops have been in New England including head-coaching stints at Plymouth State, Northeastern and Massachusetts. Not only does Brown figure to improve the Boston College defense but with Brown joining BC head coach Steve Addazio, a Farmington native and former head coach at Cheshire High School, recruiting Connecticut and the rest of New England is about to become even more challenging. Brown also recruited Florida for the Huskies and of course Addazio built relationships in the Sunshine State during his time as an assistant coach at the University of Florida so it will be interesting to see if BC beats out UConn for Florida prospects.

Here is a link to Boston College's release on Brown's appointment

Even if Brown had stayed, he would have had plenty of work to do with the graduation of UConn's all-time sacks leader Trevardo Williams, starting linebackers Jory Johnson and Sio Moore, starting cornerbacks Dwayne Gratz and Blidi Wreh-Wilson and top interior defensive lineman Ryan Wirth. The Huskies do return leading tackler Yawin Smallwood and injuries on the defensive line enabled plenty of returning players to see quality time in the defensive line rotation. The defensive line should also get a boost assuming defensive end Jesse Joseph is granted a fifth season of eligibility.

Brown also coached the cornerbacks at UConn and there is no position on the defense which will be under more scrutiny than the CBs. The ability of Wreh-Wilson and Gratz to lock up in man coverage enabled Brown to be more aggressive in sending his linebackers on blitzes. Taylor Mack  played well at times but was also beaten in man coverage. The other cornerbacks coming back are untested and head coach Paul Pasqualoni said late in the season that starting safety Byron Jones could be shifted to cornerback.

Safety Ty-Meer Brown is also back as are eight other players (including Joseph) who started at least one game on defense for the Huskies and the linebacking corps will be aided by Florida transfer Graham Stewart so Brown's departure does not mean that it won't be a dominant unit but it certainly does not help.

Coaching situation a little uncertain

Earlier today I reported that former Yale defensive coordinator Don Brown was expected to be named the Bulldogs' new football coach later in the week.

Well, it's amazing what a difference a few hours can make. Sources from Yale and UConn confirmed that Brown was offered the job but withdrew his name from consideration tonight.

It's eerily familiar to what happened in 2008 as Brown was emerging as the frontrunner for the Yale job only to withdraw his name from consideration.

What I was unable to find out is if there was a snag at some point in the negotiations but it seems to me as if something like that could very well have gone down.

Yale has interviewed former Yale assistant coach Tony Reno, Lehigh offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini and Georgetown head coach Kevin Kelly. There was a recent report that Yale had reached out to former UCLA head coach Karl Dorrell.

Obviously we will continue to follow this story and hope for everybody's sake that this saga is over quickly.

A new coach should be in place soon

Yale is moving forward relatively quickly in naming its next football coach. Multiple sources have said that a new coach could be in place as early as the middle of next week.

Sources have said that Georgetown head coach Kevin Kelly has been interviewed and former UConn defensive coordinator Don Brown is a serious candidate for the job and Yale has been granted permission to interview Brown although I have yet to confirm if he has been in for an interview yet. Tony Reno is another candidate but a source has confirmed that he has yet to come in for an interview. According to the http://www.footballscoop.com/ site, the other candidate is Lehigh offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini.

Both Kelly and Brown fit the criteria of previous head coaching experience that the search committee is looking for in Yale's next coach while Reno and Cecchini are in the mix despite the lack of previous head coaching experience.

With one prominent member of the search committee expected to be out of the state next week, there is a sense that the interviews could be conducted by the end of this week. The weekend of Jan. 13-15 was also circled as a key recruiting weekend before Tom Williams was forced to resign last month over claims that he overstated some of his credentials on his resume. The rest of the staff has remained in place until the new coach determines which of them would be part of the new staff. Having a new coach in place by next week could be invaluable in attempting to salvage the recruiting class.

Brown just completed his first season as UConn's defensive coordinator and has the most head coaching experience among the candidates with stops at Plymouth State, Northeastern and UMass. Brown led UMass to the 2006 FCS national championship game. Brown was one of the early frontrunners for the Yale job back in 2008 before pulling his name out of consideration for the job. He left UMass to become the defensive coordinator at Maryland. Brown was Carm Cozza's defensive coordinator with the Bulldogs from 1987-92.

Kelly has ties to Connecticut as his first college job was as an assistant at Southern Connecticut State in 1984 and 1985. He also has some Ivy League experience as he was on Dartmouth's staff during the Big Green's run to the 1991 Ivy League title. He also coached at Navy, an experience which could prove helpful in dealing with a limited and select player pool in recruiting.

Reno was a member of Jack Siedlecki's staff for six years, five coaching the defensive backs. When Siedlecki was pushed out the door, Reno was the point man for recruiting before Tom Williams was hired. Reno left to join the Harvard staff, in large part because of family considerations since he lived in Sturbridge, Mass. with his wife and children. Reno doesn't have any head coaching experience but he was a defensive coordinator at Worcester State.
Cecchini, a former offensive coordinator at Harvard and Citadel, guided a Mountain Hawks offensive which finished third among Football Championship Subdivision teams in total offense and fifth in passing offense. Among Cecchini's pupils were current NFL players Andre Roberts and Ryan Fitzpatrick. He guided an offense which put up 475 yards in a 37-7 win over Yale on Oct. 1.

On another matter, I did follow up on a couple of comments on my blog saying that nobody from Yale has been in contact with players who have committed to Yale. I spoke with athletic director Tom Beckett last night during Yale's men's basketball game who said he took part in a recruiting meeting with the Yale staff and if that is the case he would like to know that. Beckett would not comment on anything regarding to the search.

I was also told that the players were e-mailed about Williams' resignation before the media was told. I received the e-mail announcing Williams' departure at 8:10 and I was told that the mass e-mail to the players was sent at 8:04. I guess I need to back off some of my criticism of Yale as I suggested the media was told before the players but I still have issues with how it was handled. I understand Yale has more than 100 players but between assistant coaches, people in the sports information department and other athletic department employees there's no reason that Yale couldn't have contacted each player directly by phone or at least text message rather than send out a form letter via e-mail.