ASU coach Kenny Dillingham’s former boss, Gus Malzahn, is leading UCF to Tempe

by Junna Base November 10, 2024

Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham says he won’t think too hard about what his opponent might do this week.

The Sun Devils (6-2, 3-2) take on Central Florida (4-5, 2-4) at Mountain America Stadium on Saturday at 5 p.m., and the head coach on the visitors’ sideline is one Dillingham is pretty comfortable with is familiar.

Guz Malzahn, 59, is in his fourth season leading the UCF program. The two were on the same coaching staff at Auburn in 2019, with Dillingham serving as Malzahn’s offensive coordinator. The Tigers finished the season 9-4 overall and 5-3 in SEC play. They were ranked 14th in the final Associated Press and USA Today polls and 12th in the final CFP rankings with eventual first-round draft pick Bo Nix at quarterback.

Dillingham said he has stayed in touch with his former boss, although it is difficult now that football season is underway and schools are separated by multiple time zones. He said they talk to each other several times a year and also meet at various coaching events.

Malzahn isn’t surprised that Dillingham was able to turn around the fortunes of ASU’s program in such a short amount of time, from 3-9 in his first year, 2023, to bowl eligibility with four games left in the regular season. Picked to finish last in the 16-team Big 12 Conference in the preseason poll, the Sun Devils have already exceeded expectations.

“He has a dynamic personality and is an extremely hard worker,” Malzahn said of his protégé in a press conference on Monday. “He’s a smart guy. When he was with me he helped me a lot. He knows football. He can identify with players.”

“He has all the qualities to be a really good coach. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s able to do that – and he has a good coaching staff around him.”

There is another former Malzahn employee at ASU, senior offensive assistant David Gibbs, who served as safeties coach and co-defensive coordinator at UCF from 2021-23.

Dillingham, 34, said it can be counterproductive to guess what a coach might do because you’ve worked with them in the past.

“Sometimes you can store too much information – ‘If they do this and they might run this, but they didn’t run it this year. They ran it in Week 3 last year and they’re going to do that’ – “You’re going to hunt ghosts,” Dillingham said.

“Or do we just play football? Sometimes when you have experience with people you want to hunt ghosts, and I don’t want our guys to hunt ghosts. I want to give them information and maybe how they think, what their thought process might be.” Be yes, but I can’t tell them, “Do this or do that,” or get into the weeds too much because then we have too many Chasing ghosts and that’s the hard part about playing someone you know, you have to be a I’m a little aware of that.

The Sun Devils have some momentum after a 42-21 win over Oklahoma State and their first road win in the Big 12 era on Saturday.

UCF started the season 3-0 but had a five-game losing streak before Saturday’s 56-12 win over Arizona. Malzahn made some coaching changes after the last loss, firing his defensive coordinator and relinquishing the game-calling duties he had held.

Those moves appeared to have paid off, as the Knights responded with perhaps their best performance of the season.

“Coach Malzahn is one of the most successful active coaches,” Dillingham said. “…He’s won a lot of games and made a change last week and these guys played really, really hard with the change and that’s going to be a big challenge.”

Teams that rely on a running back should also take part in the competition – the Knights are led by RJ Harvey, the third-leading rusher in the country, and ASU is led by Cam Skattebo.

But Skattebo could be sidelined after his injury last week, and if he can’t go, second-year senior Kyson Brown would get more playing time.

Regardless of whether Skattebo plays or not, Malzahn expects a fight and appreciates his former assistant having success.

“There’s something special about him,” Malzahn said. “You could tell straight away that he had a dynamic personality and left a really positive impression on me. He’s a young guy, but he doesn’t act young. He has a gift.”

“He comes from there. This is his home. His team plays with his personality. They are very good against the run. They’ll come after you. This will be a good test for us.”

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