Don Brown, a defensive coordinator at Yale from 1987-92, was hired to the same position at UConn on Friday. Brown is close with Mark Whipple, and was expected to join the UConn staff had Whipple been hired.

New UConn head coach Paul Pasqualoni plucked Brown from Randy Edsall’s staff at Maryland. Edsall took Huskies’ special teams coordinator Lyndon Johnson with him when he abruptly left UConn for Maryland last month, and planned to retain Brown as the team’s defensive coordinator, a position he had held there since 2009.

An eye for an eye? Unlikely. But landing Brown is a coup for UConn, which lost longtime defensive coordinator Todd Orlando in the wake of Edsall’s departure. Orlando is now at Florida International.

Brown, a Spencer, Mass. native, was the head coach at Massachusetts from 2004-0
8, and led the Minutemen to the 2006 Division I-AA national final. He also served as head coach at Northeastern (2000-03) and Plymouth State (1993-95).

“We will have a defense that is aggressive, fast and physical,” Brown said. “I believe
in big pressure and penetration and that is what I am going to give the UConn defense. I am excited to get to the campus and work hard to get better every day.”