Scott Huff comes from Boise State to rejoin Chris Petersen at UW. "Different players, different facilities, but it's the same old, same old," Huff said.
As an assistant coach at Oregon the past four seasons, Matt Lubick had tried to recruit to Eugene many of the players who wound up playing instead for Washington — players Lubick is now coaching with the Huskies.
“I’m glad they came here now,” said Lubick, UW’s new co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach. “At the time I wasn’t.”
A respected recruiter, Lubick has been in Seattle just two weeks, marking his 12th stop in a 22-year coaching career. He’s coached at three other Pac-12 schools — Arizona State and Oregon State before Oregon — and watched closely as Chris Petersen led the Huskies’ resurgence the past three seasons.
“There’s a whole bunch of reasons that Washington has gone in this direction,” Lubick said, “but recruiting is a big one of them. I thought they’d done a really good job. It’s one thing to get them here; it’s another thing to develop them. And they’ve done both.”
Most Read Sports Stories
Lubick was not retained at Oregon when the Ducks fired coach Mark Helfrich after the Ducks stumbled to a 4-8 record last season. Lubick had never met Petersen in person before this position opened up last month when Bush Hamdan left for the Atlanta Falcons.
Among the top priorities for Lubick is to learn Petersen’s methods and ingratiate himself in the Washington culture.
Scott Huff, meanwhile, is steeped in that culture.
The Huskies’ new offensive line coach, Huff has been close with Petersen since 2000, when Petersen was in his first season as the offensive coordinator at Boise State and Huff was the Broncos’ starting center. Huff was then an assistant coach for all eight seasons when Petersen was the head coach at Boise.
So when veteran O-line coach Chris Strausser left for the Denver Broncos late last month, Huff was a natural fit for Petersen and the Huskies.
“Different players, different facilities, but it’s the same old, same old,” Huff said after practice Friday.
Both new assistants had a positive review after their first week of spring practices.
Huff takes over for an offensive line that returns a veteran group led by center Coleman Shelton and starting tackles Trey Adams and Kaleb McGary.
“I like these guys,” Huff said. “They’re into it and they want to be good, and that’s probably the two most important things right now.”
During the season, Lubick and Huff will collaborate with offensive coordinator Jonathan Smith and the rest of the offensive staff on game-planning preparations. Smith will continue to call plays.
“They’ve been awesome,” Smith said. “Matt and I go back to when I was a player (at Oregon State), and we’ve stayed in touch. He’s brought in some really good ideas — phenomenal in regards to scheme. He’s such a great fit because he knows the conference so well, and then he’s a fabulous recruiter. So it’s been an awesome addition. …
“Scott Huff, we worked with him over at Boise, and when you watch his O-lines play the last couple of years, they’ve been really good. He’s more familiar with what we’ve done before, so that’s been a smooth transition.”