UCLA Football Preview: South Alabama's Wommack Has Impressive Resume
He also has former Houston head coach Major Applewhite as his offensive coordinator.
The UCLA Bruins will welcome the South Alabama Jaguars to the Rose Bowl this week as the nonconference schedule concludes with the Bruins’ third straight 2022 home game.
The Jaguars are a Sun Belt Conference school which began playing football in 2009. Since the program began, South Alabama has won 68 games and lost 83. Joey Jones was the first head coach in program history and he led the Jaguars from 2009 until the end of the 2017 season. He was succeeded by Steve Campbell who was dismissed after going 9-26 in three seasons.
That led to the hiring of current head coach Kane Wommack. While Wommack went 5-7 in his first season, he does have the Jaguars off to a 2-0 start this season. At the age of 35, Wommack is one of the youngest head coaches in college football.
This is Wommack’s second stint with South Alabama. He was the team’s defensive coordinator in 2016 and 2017. In 2018, he was hired by his old boss Tom Allen to coach Indiana’s linebackers and he was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2019. He also served as the defensive coordinator at Eastern Illinois in 2014 and 2015.
Having been primarily a defensive coach, Wommack hired former Houston head coach Major Applewhite as his offensive coordinator. He joined the Jaguars after spending two seasons as an analyst under Nick Saban at Alabama. Applewhite has also coached under Todd Graham at Rice, Mack Brown at Texas and Tom Herman at Houston.
Corey Batoon is the Jaguars’ defensive coordinator. While he grew up in Hawai’i, Batoon is a guy who has some Southern California roots. He started his collegiate playing experience at San Diego JC and eventually transferred to Long Beach State. While earning his degree from there, Batoon started coaching at Pierce College. He coached under Hugh Freeze at Arkansas State, Ole Miss and Liberty. While he served as Nick Rolovich’s defensive coordinator at Hawai’i in 2018 and 2019, he wasn’t with the Rainbow Warriors when they visited the Rose Bowl in 2017.
Special Teams
Diego Guajardo is an established college kicker. He has handled all the Jaguars’ kicking duties for each of the past two seasons. However, Gaujardo has only kicked off once so far this year. He’s 3-for-3 on field goal attempts so far this season and he was a combined 25 of 34 over the past two seasons. His career long is 54 yards.
Junior Jacob Meeks had been the team’s kickoff specialist for 15 of their 16 kickoffs this season and four of those 15 have gone for touchbacks. He is averaging 58.5 yards per kickoff after two games.
The South Alabama punter is 29-year old junior Jack Brooks. Brooks is another Australian punter. So far this season, five of Brooks’ eleven punts have gone inside the 20, but only one of them has been fair caught by the Jaguars’ opponents. I expect that to change this weekend since UCLA has fair caught most of their opponents’ punts so far.
Sophomore wide receiver Caullin Lacy is the Jaguars’ primary punt returner. He is potentially a dangerous return man, having returned one of his five punt returns for 38 yards. After UCLA’s special teams breakdowns against Bowling Green, the Bruin punt team will need to avoid another one or Lacy could give the Jaguars a big boost with a long return.
Freshman running back Braylon McReynolds will back up Lacy on punt returns while also returning kickoffs. He has returned two kickoffs so far with a long of 23 yards. McReynolds will be joined by grad transfer Omni Wells. The former Mississippi State running back has not yet returned a kickoff since joining the team.
Go Bruins!!!
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