Football head coach Ron Zook officially announced his new defensive coordinator Wednesday, naming former Northwestern and Colorado DC Vince Okruch to the position.

Okruch has 29 years of college coaching experience, including seven seasons as the defensive line coach and later defensive coordinator under former Wildcats coach Gary Barnett. His first stint in the Big Ten came when he spent seven seasons moving up the ranks from graduate assistant to linebackers coach at Minnesota.

Zook said Okruch has enough experience to be a strong defensive director, but understands the importance of maintaining a consistent scheme.

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel; we’ve got too far to go to start over at square one,” Zook said. “I want to be able to start where we’re at. We did make improvement throughout the year, even though it’s hard to see sometimes, so I want to be able to go from there and not go back and start over.”

Most recently, Okruch spent one season as defensive coordinator at Western Illinois and in 2005 became the linebackers coach at Louisiana-Monroe.

From 1999 to 2003 Okruch served as Barnett’s defensive coordinator at Colorado. He was released after the 2003 season, in which the Buffaloes went 5-7 amidst controversy surrounding a female placekicker and alleged recruiting violations four years prior.

“There was never a second in my life when I didn’t believe my career would go back to where I felt it needed to be,” Okruch said. “There was just a couple things that happen along the way. It’s like anything in life, once it’s taken away from you, you’re kind of like, ‘Whoa.'”

Okruch’s family still lives in Boulder, but he said they plan to move to Champaign. His son, Jordan, is a high school junior who plays tight end and his daughter Taylor is a junior at Colorado – although Okruch said she plans to transfer to Illinois.

Zook said Okruch had been in the running for the defensive coordinator position last season, before Mike Mallory was retained from former Illinois coach Ron Turner’s staff.

Okruch said he was drawn to Illinois because of its coaching staff’s energy level.

“You spend a couple minutes around coach Zook and if you don’t get excited about what he’s intending to do here, I guess you’ve got to be dead,” Okruch said. “That’s the first thing that struck me the first time I got into his vehicle at the airport. He has that high energy level; he possesses what you need to possess to turn a program around.”

Zook said he does not anticipate much changing on the field and Okruch said it is too early to decide exactly where the team is weakest.

“There’s kind of an unsaid rule that we’ve got to know who we are, we’ve got to know where we’re going, and we’ve got to know how we’re going to get there,” Okruch said. “The who we are is going to involve me getting caught up film-wise and getting to know who we are. We all know where we’re going. The trick now is how you get these particular players from where we’re at to where we want to be.”

Okruch said he uses a clear-cut defensive philosophy: keep it simple, keep it sound, and you’ll keep it sudden. He said it’s too early to decide where Illinois’ defense needs the most change, but from what he’s seen the team is ready to make any necessary adjustments.

“Everything here is geared towards getting it done, getting it done right and being competitive,” Okruch said. “There’s just an energy here that I wanted to be a part of, and now that I am I’m extremely excited.”