BYU Football: Kalani Sitake to be new Cougars head coach
The BYU Cougars will reportedly name Kalani Sitake the team’s new head coach, replacing Bronco Mendenhall who left to take the head coaching job with the Virginia Cavaliers.
Kalani Sitake is coming home to BYU as the former player and assistant coach with the Cougars will be named the team’s new head coach, according to Thayer Evans of Sports Illustrated.
Sitake spend last year with the Oregon State Beavers as the defensive coordinator after spending the previous 10 years with the Utah Utes, including the last six as the team’s defensive coordinator and the last three as the assistant head coach.
The 40-year-old native of Tonga, played for BYU in 1994 as a fullback before going on his two-year mission and returning to BYU in 1997. Sitake was the Scholar Athlete of the Year in 1998 before graduating in 2000. He was a graduate assistant at BYU in 2002.
Sitake replaces Bronco Mendenhall who accepted the head coaching job with the Virginia Cavaliers earlier this offseason. Mendenhall remained with BYU through the December 19 bowl game against rival Utah.
BYU previously showed interest in Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo but he decided to stay with the Midshipmen, so two days after he rejected them, BYU hires Sitake.
He inherits a stable program that went 9-3 this year under Mendenhall, pending the outcome of today’s Las Vegas Bowl, and went 99-42 in 11 years at BYU.
This will be Sitake’s first head coaching position. His defense last year at Oregon State was No. 117 out of 128 FBS teams, but the talent on the roster at BYU should be a significant step up from what he had in Corvallis.