Kentucky football’s Andy Buh leaving for position at Maryland

After a season of comings and goings, Kentucky’s football staff seemed settled.

But it experienced yet another shakeup Monday afternoon when it was announced that newly appointed special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach Andy Buh was leaving.

Although the school has not made a formal announcement, Buh is expected to be named the defensive coordinator at the University of Maryland.

He will join the staff of new Terrapins head coach DJ Durkin, whose original defensive coordinator, Scott Shafer, left for “personal reasons” on Friday. Shafer had been on the job only since December.

On Monday afternoon, Kentucky officials confirmed that Buh, 42, had resigned to take another coaching position in a news release.

“I want to thank Coach Buh for his work and his commitment to our program during his time here,” Coach Mark Stoops said in the release. “I have a lot of respect for Andy as he is extremely passionate and very detailed. He has good balance between being disciplined and having energy, and our players loved playing for him.”

Buh has a long friendship with Durkin, a former defensive coordinator at Michigan and Florida. Durkin offered Buh the special teams coordinator job at Maryland in December, but UK gave Buh a salary boost and a new title (special teams coordinator) to keep him on staff.

Buh initially joined Kentucky’s staff in February 2015 as an outside linebackers coach after a year away from football. Before that, he was defensive coordinator at California.

Then at Florida, Durkin was one of the coaches Buh visited in his season away from the game to learn the nuances of the 3-4 defensive scheme, which Kentucky was moving toward.

“One of the things I did throughout the whole last year was study the 3-4 defense, because I’ve been a four-down guy my entire career,” Buh said a year ago when he was hired at UK. “So that gave me a chance to visit a lot of my friends and really study and dive into the nuts and bolts of the 3-4.”

As recently as Thursday, Buh was discussing the ins and outs of his new role as UK special teams coordinator.

“Part of this thing is teaching them the techniques, reducing their battles to just one-on-ones; that’s all we’re trying to do this spring, just teaching them really good techniques and getting them excited about playing special teams,” he said.

Buh also was working with an outside linebackers group, including Denzil Ware and Josh Allen, that has limited experience, but the coach said he that he has been “pleasantly surprised with how fast they’re picking stuff up.”

Now, at exactly the midway point of spring football, Stoops will have to replace yet another staff member. This offseason the UK head coach has fired offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and wide receivers coach Tommy Mainord.

UK also has had other departures, including losing secondary coach Derrick Ansley to Alabama and running backs coach Chad Scott to North Carolina.

This offseason, UK created several new staff quality control positions, including Louie Matsakis for special teams, which should help in the interim while Stoops looks for someone to fill Buh’s position. Matsakis is a former special teams coordinator at Kansas.

Two coaches on UK’s staff, offensive coordinator Eddie Gran and secondary coach Steve Clinkscale, both have experience as special teams coordinator.

Stoops has a regularly scheduled news conference after Tuesday morning’s practice and probably will address his plans to fill the vacancy.

This story was originally published April 4, 2016 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Kentucky football’s Andy Buh leaving for position at Maryland."