Graham Leaves Rice For Tulsa
You can go home after all.
Tulsa hired Rice’s Todd Graham as its new head coach, replacing Steve Kragthorpe with his former defensive coordinator.
Graham ran Kragthorpe’s defense for three years at Tulsa before taking the Rice job last year. He turned around the Owls program, taking a team that had been 1-10 in 2005 and leading it to a 7-6 season and its first bowl game in 45 years.
He will take the reins of a resurgent team that went to three bowl games in four years under Kragthorpe. He will also coach players he helped recruit during his time at Tulsa.
Kragthorpe left Tulsa on Tuesday to replace Bobby Petrino at Louisville. The same day, Graham signed a contract to stay at Rice until 2012. However, Tulsa was still able to lure him away. Of the finalists for the job, he was the only candidate interviewed by the school.
Graham, 42, takes over a program that he helped Kragthorpe resurrect. Tulsa had won only one game in each of the two seasons before Kragthorpe took over in 2003. His staff led Division I’s best turnaround, as the Golden Hurricane went to a bowl game for the first time since 1991.
Such reversals have been common in Graham’s career. He spent two seasons on Rich Rodriguez’s staff at West Virginia, helping begin the Mountaineers’ current run of five straight winning seasons, before similar turnarounds at Tulsa and Rice. He previously coached at East Central (Okla.) University and at high schools in Oklahoma and Texas.
At Tulsa, Graham inherits a program that has made back-to-back postseason trips for the first time since 1964-65. His predecessor, Kragthorpe, went 29-22 in four seasons, including three bowl games. The Golden Hurricane were 8-5 this season and lost four of their final five games, including a 25-13 defeat to Utah in the Armed Forces Bowl.
In 2005, Graham’s Tulsa defense forced 31 turnovers — tied for the ninth-best total in Division I — to help the Golden Hurricane win the Conference USA title. The Golden Hurricane ranked first in the conference in pass efficiency defense, second in total defense and third in scoring defense that season.
Last season, Tulsa led the league in total defense, while Rice ranked last.
The Golden Hurricane return quarterback Paul Smith, who threw for 2,727 yards and 15 touchdowns, and top tailback Courtney Tennial, who ran for 845 yards and 13 TDs. However, Graham must replace his top two receivers and most of a senior-laden offensive line that entered this season with more collective starts than any other Division I team.
Tulsa also loses four of its top five tacklers on defense, including linebacker Nick Bunting, the Conference USA defensive player of the year.
Leave a Reply