UK football notebook: Tandem of strength coaches gives Cats more muscle

Ever have so much to do at your job that you wish you could clone yourself to get everything finished?

Without the test tubes and the secret laboratory, Kentucky’s Corey Edmond has nearly done that.

This offseason, the head strength and conditioning coach made a pitch to a former player and good friend to leave his job at Indiana — where he ran his own program — and join him at Kentucky.

The pitch was simple.

“He always talked about getting the band back together,” laughed Mark Hill, who took the position of assistant director of strength and conditioning in January.

Hill points to an old photo of himself and Edmond in the tiny, sparsely decorated office the two men now share. As strength and conditioning gurus at Oklahoma, they helped the Sooners reach great heights, including multiple bowls and two trips to national championship games.

There were 13 All-Americans and 28 NFL Draft picks in their Sooners’ weight room.

“When we took that Rose Bowl picture, you see three head strength coaches and any of those guys on that (Oklahoma) team would tell you, there was nowhere to hide,” Hill said. “It’s three guys with great chemistry, great enthusiasm, passion for what we did.”

Edmond knew he needed help if he wanted to build that type of system at Kentucky. So he called Hill and convinced him to come to Kentucky.

“If we want to be able to take on this conference, I’m not ashamed to say, I need help,” Edmond said. “I needed help from people who know exactly what we’re looking for and exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it. …

“I had to find a way to put enough minds together so I can have that same synergy when we did go to two national championships.”

Enter Hill, who spent five years running the show at Indiana and four years before that doing the same thing at Minnesota.

“He just put in a way that I knew it would work,” said Hill, who first met Edmond when he coached him at Chattanooga, where Hill was a three-year starting wide receiver. “So we set some egos to the side … We just came together with a collective effort to push guys and take them to another level.”

The consensus so far is that it’s working.

At a recent Junior Day, Coach Mark Stoops watched as Hill commanded the room.

“It’s like having two co-head strength and conditioning guys because they work so hand in hand,” UK’s head coach told the Herald-Leader.

And of luring Hill away from IU, Stoops said: “He believed in what we we’re doing; he believed in Corey and he believes in Kentucky football and myself and what we’re doing and wanted to be a part of it. … It was a home run.”

On a recent Friday morning, Hill and Edmond never so much as looked at each other as they ran players through drills and weights. They worked together in unison in different parts of the weight room, trying to have the most impact in the shortest amount of time.

The two had been in the office since 4 a.m. planning the training regimen — first for select defensive players and then for select offensive players.

The second group had to be shooed out of the room for showing up before their allotted time.

“When you have guys who want to bust through the doors to get here, that tells you something,” Edmond said. “It tells you something about where you’re going as a team.”

Having that extra set of hands from a guy who already ran his own program has been a big lift, explained Courtney Love, who along with fellow linebacker Kash Daniel asked to stay longer to work out more even after his time was up.

“It’s more intense,” Love said. “You’re bringing someone in who was a head strength coach at a Division I program and I think it was nothing but a boost for us.”

In name, Edmond is the head strength and conditioning coach, but it’s hard to tell in the room.

“Everybody works together and is pretty much one voice,” Love said. “And we’re all paying attention.”

It’s not about who’s in charge, both Edmond and Hill explained. According to their most recently posted contracts at UK, Edmond makes $204,000 and Hill’s at $200,000.

It’s not about who is the “head” and who is the “assistant,” they said.

“Whatever title you need to give us, fine,” Edmond said. “I want to win. It’s not about titles, it’s about winning.”

And to win, UK needed to ramp up much of its offseason work, with Stoops noting on National Signing Day that UK’s players are being pushed “harder right now than they ever have.”

With Edmond and Hill in charge, Stoops said he wanted longer, harder workouts for his players. He wanted to begin earlier, which has meant a longer winter conditioning schedule as well as more “fourth-quarter drills” with coaches. There will be nine of those workouts — including change-of-direction drills and position-specific training — instead of the five from last season.

“What I like about that is that kind of stuff stresses you mentally as much as it does physically,” Stoops said.

That message about getting over mental hurdles seems to be resonating with the players.

“People are definitely less comfortable,” Love said. “You’re definitely thinking about giving up and giving in. And right now what (they’re) trying to do is not necessarily break us, but show us what it takes to be the best. To do that, we have to have the best training.”

Rivalry a long time in the making

Kash Daniel and women’s basketball player Maci Morris became friends when the linebacker arrived at Kentucky for the start of the spring semester.

But their fathers have been tight since long before the UK freshmen were born. Scott Daniel and Lewis Morris were teammates and sometimes roommates during their time at East Tennessee State.

“He’s one of my best friends,” said Morris of the elder Daniel. “We talk all the time. He’s always calling when he sees Maci on the news or on TV or something, and I’m doing the same about Kash. It’s unbelievable that we ended up both with a kid up there playing ball at Kentucky.”

Lewis Morris, now the boys’ basketball coach at Bell County, called it a “blessing” that the two families will get to watch each other’s kids play at UK for the next few years.

“We’re both going to get to see them play and we get to see each other,” Lewis said. “For Eastern Kentucky, I think it’s great. Any time we’ve got somebody up there playing, especially the way the economy is going and stuff around here, it gives everybody something to talk about.”

Kash Daniel, who graduated early from Paintsville to start spring practices at Kentucky, said seeing Maci on the news scoring double figures in the Southeastern Conference makes him happy.

“To see her come from Bell County and see her dominant in the SEC like that, it gives me hope of maybe being a freshman and coming in and contributing in the SEC,” he said. “I’m really proud of Maci. … I know her dad and her family’s proud of her.”

There’s also a friendly rivalry brewing between the two players from the Eastern Kentucky area, with Daniel noting that Morris “still can’t guard me. I don’t care what she says.”

He suggested a friendly pickup game between himself and Morris as well as former Anderson County star and UK transfer Makenzie Cann.

“I’ve proposed a two-on-two basketball game, but I don’t think Coach Stoops would like that too much,” he joked.

And who would Daniel choose as a teammate against Cann and Morris?

“If I got to pick, I’d probably try to be friends with Jamal Murray or somebody,” he smiled.

Landis, Matsakis join staff

Kentucky filled its two newly created quality control assistant positions in the past few days, with both Brian Landis (defensive assistant) and Louie Matsakis (special teams assistant) making it official on Twitter.

They join former Iowa State wide receivers coach Tommy Mangino, who is the quality control assistant for the offense.

The three new positions, which already exist for most Power Five conference and NFL teams, are not part of the core assistant coaching staff of nine, but they work closely with the coordinators. The UK program has been behind the times by not having those positions.

Landis previously coached safeties at Eastern Kentucky and spent 13 seasons coaching defensive backs at Georgetown College before that. He also served as recruiting coordinator for the Tigers. Landis was captain of the Georgetown team that won the 2000 NAIA national championship.

Matsakis, a three-year letterman as a kicker and punter at Emporia State, was special teams coordinator at Kansas after serving as director of personnel for the Jayhawks. He spent four seasons at Youngstown State as special teams coordinator and running backs coach as well as recruiting coordinator at the school.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 6:53 PM with the headline "UK football notebook: Tandem of strength coaches gives Cats more muscle."