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New hires firm up UH football coaching roster

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  • The UH football team held practice at lower UH Campus on Oct. 7. Quarterback Ikaika Woolsey, in red, was elevated to starter after the previous starter, Max Wittek, was injured.

Kevin Lempa will be named the University of Hawaii football team’s defensive coordinator, according to people familiar with the situation.

In addition, UH will hire Kefense Hynson as wide receivers coach, Sean Duggan as linebackers coach and Jason Cvercko as recruiting coordinator.

The official announcements are expected today.

Lempa served as UH’s defensive coordinator in 2000-2002. This past season, he coached Boston College’s defensive backs. The Eagles led the nation in total defense (254.3 yards per game) this past regular season.

Duggan was a graduate assistant who assisted with Boston College’s defense this past season.

Hynson served as Norfolk State’s receivers coach this year.

Cvercko was Nevada’s coordinator of recruiting operations this year. Cvercko will be hired to UH’s newly created non-coaching position.

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  • Don’t know how i feel about the Lempa hiring, when he was here before the defense wasn’t very good. hopefully, being at Boston College rubbed off on him. Go Rolo, please don’t disappoint like Chow!

      • Actually SuperBob has a point, when JJ was head coach he could pull in ex NFL level staff like Glanville and others. Even Kamehameha pulled in an ex NFL person and although he left, the team did quite well will he was head coach. You do NOT have to have ESP that UH are hiring 2nd tier coaches due to skill level and/or inexperience. That was the best Chow could do as well and the outcome was not pretty. We all hope Rolo and his staff can do a lot better but without top coaches, often with NFL creds like JJ and Miano, recruitment top blue chip players will be difficult. For the best of the best players in Div1A the goal is to reach the NFL and if you don’t have coaches who themselves have not reached that level as coach and/or player OR have winning program records like BYU, Boise State, etc. they will question whether they should play for that school. Maitlin OWNS the choise of Rolo over JJ and Miano and time will tell whether he made the right decision.

        • Cheeseball: Did a quick check and for the 6 plus years (7th year he quit early) JJ was at SMU, they were in 4 bowl games, 2 of them the Hawaii bowl. For the 9 years at UH, UH was in 6 bowl games, including the Sugar Bowl. JJ’s record at UH and SMU pays the bills for the school. Far superior compared to chow

        • @inverse
          With all the recent assistant coach hires, some fairly questionable, what do all the June Jones naysayers have to say about that?

    • Well when we can come up with more money maybe then we can all be happy right. Send in your ideas. Maybe instead of complaining we should just be loyal and come to the games. If all the big schools hire all top tier coaches then how come they get fired. Post comments so we can figure out this simple problems.

  • I am getting more comfortable with these guys, but after the names of some young up and coming coaches that were considered earlier got hired away, there was some natural disappointment– and those guys ended up being hired at major conference schools for more money than we can pay. But these guys have good resumes which hopefully makes up for being a little low on experience. On the defensive side Lempa brings the most experience of any one on the staff which is good and will help the younger guys.

  • Coach Rolovich gets what the university can afford. Hope Coach Rolovich is successful in his third and fourth year. If the Warriors have seasons like those of Chow years I would hope the powers to be consider terminating the program.

  • I guess, as Coach, he had some budget restraints and went for the best he could find that were willing to work for the compensation package. In other words, thats what we can afford! Happy New Year! Go Rainbow Warriors!

  • Let’s give Rolo and his staff a chance to prove themselves. Can’t expect miracles in the first season but hopefully the team will improve from this past season. Hard not to.

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