Bennett new Pitt defensive coordinator

Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt has sold his team’s historic win over West Virginia Dec. 1… Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt has sold his team’s historic win over West Virginia Dec. 1 to prominent recruits and has promoted the promise seen in the Pitt program during and after the upset to land most of them.

And the same idea helped him pick up a defensive coordinator.

Wannstedt announced yesterday the hiring of former Southern Methodist head coach Phil Bennett to replace the departed Paul Rhoads.

“I’m not going to lie to you, the game against WVU, it was impressive,” Bennett said yesterday at a press conference at Pitt’s South Side practice facility. “I just feel that there’s something happening here that I want to be a part of.”

Bennett joins the Pitt staff after coaching SMU from 2002 to 2007. He was fired after this season, which saw the Mustangs go 1-11 despite coaching the team to six wins in 2006 – SMU’s highest win total in a decade.

Bennett, 52, was also the defensive coordinator and secondary coach at Kansas State from 1999 to 2001 and held the defensive coordinator position at Texas A’M, earning “Coordinator of the Year” honors from American Football Quarterly in 1995.

“When you look at our defensive staff, it was critical that we get a coach that has [coached] at a high level but also a coach that’s coached everything on defense,” Wannstedt said. “I think [Bennett’s] knowledge will help.”

Wannstedt and Bennett have known each other since the early 1980s, when Wannstedt was an assistant at Oklahoma State and Bennett at Texas A’M. The two have kept in contact throughout the years and share a similar coaching and personal philosophy.

“I’d always followed Dave,” Bennett said. “Besides his coaching, I want to get beside somebody who’s a good guy.

“We’re not going to change a whole lot,” Bennett said, referring to Pitt’s defensive system developed under Rhoads, who left in January for a similar position at Auburn. Bennett preaches an aggressive defensive unit that dictates a game’s tempo and attacks trendy spread and quarterback-read offenses.

“Defense is an attitude, and the [Pitt] players are starting to get the picture,” Bennett said, before comparing Pitt’s win over West Virginia to the New York Giants’ upset of the New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl XLII. “Last year was the first step in where they wanted to go.”

Wannstedt must fill one more full-time assistant position, wide receivers coach, which Aubrey Hill vacated to inherit the same position at Miami, closer to his home. Wannstedt said he plans to announce that hiring along with those of several graduate assistant coaches late this week to early next week.

Photo editor Pete Madia contributed reporting for this story.