With a healthy number of former Tennessee football players on his roster, former Vols offensive coordinator Alex Golesh led USF to pulling off a blowout upset. The Bulls hosted No. 25 Boise State on Thursday and ran away with a 34-7 win. This featured 34 unanswered points from Golesh’s offense.
While Golesh has become a trendy name as far as Group of Six coaches that could move to the Power Four level soon, he has employed a handful of his former players at his first head coaching gig to help out. In the win over Boise State, which marks the 12th-ranked win in program history, former Vol wide receiver Chas Nimrod went off. After playing a role off the bench for UT a year ago, he caught three passes for a team-high 96 yards. This included a long of 55 yards.
On the defensive side of the ball, De’Shawn Rucker had a strong game. The former Tennessee DB, who is in his second year at USF, posted 11 tackles, the second-most on the team, including half a tackle for loss and one pass defended.
While he didn’t get in the game, Gaston Moore is also on the roster. He served as Nico Iamaleava’s backup a year ago and got action in both the wins over Alabama and Mississippi State with Iamaleava injured.
Former UT offensive lineman Parker Ball is also on staff as an assistant offensive line coach.
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With this win, Golesh now owns a 15-12 record at USF and is 2-0 in bowl games. He went 7-6 in both his first two seasons, including a 4-4 mark in AAC play.
This is Golesh’s first head coaching job. In his first year, he led the Bulls to their first bowl game since 2018 and defeated Syracuse 45-0. This came after taking over a program that was coming off a 1-11 season.
Golesh first joined Heupel in 2020 at Central Florida. After one year as the offensive coordinator and tight ends coach with the Knights, he joined Heupel in Knoxville to start his Vols’ tenure. He served the same role at Tennessee.
Before that, Golesh was the tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator at Iowa State, Illinois and Toledo. He was the running backs coach for a year at Toledo, as well.
Golesh was a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State and Northern Illinois early in his career. He was a student assistant at Ohio State, where he received his degree. His coaching career started as the defensive line coach for Westerville Central High School in Ohio.
He was born in Moscow, Russia, and is 41 years old.
