Nick Rolovich reportedly close to completing his staff

Nick Rolovich continues to bring more of his former Hawaii staff to the Washington State Cougars as more assistant coach hires are being reported over the last few days.

Rolovich had brought 3 of his on-field assistants with him to his introductory press conference, and news broke on Sunday that he had raided Wyoming’s staff for 3 defensive coaches including new coordinator Jake Dickert. Since then news has broke about another 3 assistants coming from the Islands. Let’s take a look at the new names and their projected responsibilities.

Mark Weber/Offensive Line

Veteran coach with 37 years of experience. Had a stint at Oregon State in the late 80s and coached UCLA’s offensive line from 1997 to 2003…… Most recently had long stints at Fresno State, BYU, and Utah State before spending the last two year with Hawaii….. Coached a bunch of lineman that went on to have NFL careers including Pro Bowler Logan Mankins.

Mark Banker/Safeties

Another long time veteran assistant……Banker is a Mike Riley acolyte and served as defensive coordinator for Oregon State, Nebraska and the San Diego Chargers….Banker was out of football for a year after the end of his Nebraska tenure before re-emerging as Hawaii’s Assistant Head Coach/Linebackers coach….Banker’s defenses at OSU were consistently some of the best in the conference…..Banker also had stints at USC and Stanford.

Ricky Logo/Defensive Line:

Has spent the last two seasons as Hawaii’s defensive line coach……Previous to that had successful tenures at Colorado State and Houston coaching the same position……..Prior to that spent 4 years in the SEC with Vanderbilt….American Samoa native who hopefully can re-open the recruiting pipeline lost when Joe Salave’a departed to Oregon.

This should leave Rolovich with just the wide receivers coach position to fill. The previously reported coaches were Offensive Coordinator Brian Smith, Quarterbacks coach Craig Stuztmann, and Special Teams coach Michael Ghoulbrial from the Hawaii staff and Dickert, Cornerbacks coach John Richardson and Linebackers (?) coach AJ Cooper from Wyoming. Rolovich also brought Chief of Staff Jason Cvercko and Strength and Conditioning coach Dwain Bradshaw from UH for off the field positions. It remains to be seen who Rolovich will bring in for any offensive or defensive analysts for non-recruiting coaching positions.

Analysis

Should we be concerned that every assistant so far is coming from a non-Power 5 school? Maybe. It should be noted that a lot of these coaches do have previous Power 5 experience and that the same could have been said when Chris Petersen brought most of his staff from Boise State to Washington. That worked out pretty well. On the other hand, we all remember Paul Wulff bringing his Eastern staff to the Pac-12 and the disaster that was. I would have like to have to seen a couple of Power 5 coaches poached, but l’m going to give Coach Rolo the benefit of the doubt for this first season.

Football

New play-caller for Gardner Minshew

Anthony Gordon turning some heads

Everett QB Victor Gabalis has preferred walk-on invite from WSU
Earned scholie offer from Hawaii when Rolo was there

Basketball

This week in WSU hoops: In search of a Rocky Mountain High
Data Raid needs to be dialed in: while WSU is much improved from last season, so is No. 23 Colorado and Utah no easy task in its house either