This is Arizona coach Mike Stoops’ seventh season with the Wildcats, but the first without younger brother Mark by his side.

Mark Stoops, who had been the defensive coordinator at UA, left after last season to take the same job with first-year Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher.

Early in fall camp, when Arizona’s practices were open, it was clear that Mike was active and fully engaged in his young defense, which is replacing seven starters. Asked what it has been like without Mark this preseason, Mike laughed and said, “I’m more hoarse than I usually am.”

Mark is putting his vocal chords and energy to use with the Seminoles, while Mike created co-defensive coordinator positions at Arizona. Stoops promoted linebackers Tim Kish and brought in Colorado assistant Greg Brown, who also will coach the secondary.

When I asked Brown earlier this month if he would be inclined to use more man-to-man schemes than Arizona was accustomed to under Mark Stoops, he said:

“This has nothing to do with me. This is Mike Stoops’ defense … Make no mistake, this is Mike Stoops’ defense. Mike has had the highest level of success. We’re not going to be changing much, I’ll tell you that.”

We’ll see about that last part, starting Friday at Toledo.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2010 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Greg Brown, Mark Stoops, Mike Stoops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.