Louisiana football coach Michael Desormeaux names New Orleans Bowl interim coordinators
Tim Leger will serve as interim offensive coordinator and Wes Neighbors will serve as interim defensive coordinator for the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns at the New Orleans Bowl, new coach Michael Desormeaux told The Daily Advertiser on Tuesday.
Desormeaux also said decisions on full-time coordinators, which current assistant coaches will be retained and what new hires will be made will not be announced sometime after No. 17 UL (12-1) plays Marshall (7-5) on Dec. 18 (8:15 p.m., ESPN) in New Orleans.
“A lot of that stuff is still brewing right now,” Desormeaux said.
“Our focus right now is to finish this season and to finish for this time the way they deserve to go out. So I think all that other stuff kind of becomes a little bit of a distraction when you start trying to name coaches right now and doing those things.
“We’ll leave all the permanent decisions to kind of after the bowl game, when we’ve got time to kind of take a deep breath and look around and see what’s going on and the dust settles.”
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Desormeaux needs to name a new defensive coordinator to replace Patrick Toney, who left UL to join former Cajuns coach Billy Napier at Florida, and hire both a new running backs coach to replace Jabbar Juluke and a new strength and conditioning coach to replace Mark Hocke, both of whom also followed the new Gators coach to Gainesville.
“Obviously I’m working on a staff and doing things I need to do right now to get all that stuff in place,” Desormeaux said, “but I feel like there’s been so many distractions from this team and the accomplishments that they have made and the things they have done that I want to minimize that as much as possible this bowl.
“I want it to be about these kids, I want it to be about getting this 13th win and I want it to be about finishing this thing the way we set out.”
Neighbors is in his first season as Sun Belt Conference-champion UL’s safeties coach.
A safety and special teams player at Alabama from 2008-11 and a Crimson Tide defensive analyst from 2015-17, he was also was safeties coach at Florida Atlantic from 2018-19 and safeties coach at South Florida in 2020.
Leger is in his fourth season as the Cajuns’ receivers coach.
He’s also UL’s recruiting coordinator, and was in his first season this year as the Cajuns’ co-offensive coordinator with tight ends coach Desormeaux, who was named UL’s head coach Sunday.
Leger was receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at UL Monroe from 2016-17 and spent nine seasons prior to that at McNeese as receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.
A quarterback at McNeese after spending three years playing minor-league baseball, the 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates fourth-round draft choice also was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at St. Thomas More High from 2001-06.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Louisiana football coach Michael Desormeaux names interim coordinators
