This won’t be Lincoln Riley’s first time having to go against Penn State OC Andy Kotelnicki’s scheme.
Three seasons ago, when Riley was the head coach at Oklahoma and Kotelnicki the offensive coordinator at Kansas, the teams met for a late-October game in Lawrence.
Riley’s Sooners won, 35-23 but it wasn’t as if Kotelnicki and Kansas, which came in 1-5, didn’t give No. 3 Oklahoma a scare.
Kansas led 10-0 at the half before Oklahoma eventually pulled away, scoring 21 points in the fourth quarter. Kansas ended up finishing 2-10 but things only got better from there. With Kotelnicki running the offense, Kansas improved to 6-7 the next season and got even better the year after that, going 9-4.
Kansas’ offense became one of the best in the country in 2022 and ‘23, which led to Kotelnicki getting the Penn State job.
Now, with Kotelnicki in his first season at Penn State and Riley his third at USC— calling the plays as head coach, as he did at Oklahoma— the two will face off Saturday afternoon.
Riley has been impressed by Kotelnicki.
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“I think he’s a really, really good coach,” Riley told reporters via Zoom Thursday afternoon. “They did a tremendous job at Kansas, really turned around that program, brought life into that program that honestly hadn’t had it in a while. I know Andy was a big part of that.”
So what impresses Riley most about Kotelnicki?
“I think the thing that I’ve admired most watching him both there and early here in his time at Penn State, I think he does a great job using his personnel and finding different ways (to get players involved),” Riley said. “They certainly have a system you can tell that they believe in, but they’re creative with their personnel to try to give them advantages on the field that put their people in the best positions to succeed. It just looks like he’s has a great feel for that. You just look at guy’s flow as far as play calling in critical moments or how they adjust, and he certainly does a good job of that as well. But the one thing that’s stuck out to me is just, I think he’s very creative in using the personnel.”
A good example of Kotelnicki’s creativity took place last week, when he liked up a near-350-pound offensive lineman in Vega Ioane in the slot. The result was this.
Every angle of this Olaivavega Ioane block deserves another look… pic.twitter.com/mBiN8LQpMp
— Cole Cubelic (@colecubelic) October 10, 2024
Penn State and USC are scheduled to meet at 3:30 Saturday on CBS.
