BATON ROUGE – LSU’s defensive coaching staff gained two new coaches Saturday when Sal Sunseri, a former All-American at Pittsburgh, and Mel Tucker, defensive backs coach at Miami of Ohio, were named assistant coaches for the Tigers, head coach Nick Saban announced. Sunseri will coach the Tiger linebackers and Tucker will coach LSU’s defensive secondary.
With eight assistant coaches now on board, Saban has one more slot to fill out the Tiger coaching staff.
Sunseri, an All-American linebacker at Pittsburgh, comes to LSU from Alabama A&M where he has served as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the last two seasons.
Prior to his service at Alabama A&M, Sunseri coached linebackers at Louisville for three seasons.
“Sal is a guy I’ve known for a long time and everywhere he has been, they have had outstanding defenses,” Saban said. “They had great success with their defenses at Pittsburgh and at Louisville, and now he has had coordinating experience at Alabama A&M. He is known as an outstanding people person and recruiter.”
As a player, Sunseri played under Jackie Sherrill and helped lead Pittsburgh to a three-year record of 33-3 with three bowl wins while the defense allowed an average of only 11 points per game. The defensive MVP of the 1982 Senior Bowl, Sunseri was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but his career was cut short by a training camp knee injury.
He started his college coaching career at Pittsburgh in 1985 as defensive line coach under head coach Foge Fazio, and then moved to linebackers coach when Mike Gottfried became Pittsburgh’s coach the following season. He coached the Panther linebackers through the 1992 season when he was named assistant head coach under Paul Hackett.
Sunseri is married to the former Roxann Evans, a gymnast at Pitt, and they have four children, Jaclyn, Santino, Vincent and Ashlyn.
Tucker, who served as a graduate assistant under Saban at Michigan State for two years, joins the LSU staff from Miami of Ohio where he coached defensive backs for one year.
“In his two years at Michigan State, I found that he was one of the best young coaches I have ever been around,” Saban said. “They were ready to elevate his position at Miami after just one year on the staff there. That’s how good he is.”
A 1995 graduate of Wisconsin where he played in the Badgers’ secondary for four seasons, Tucker had a brief stint with the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League in 1995.
Tucker spent the 1997 and 1998 seasons as a graduate assistant at Michigan State, carrying out a variety of duties, including coaching in the defensive secondary, coordinating opponent scouting reports and coordinating the scout teams.
Tucker and his wife, Jo Ellyn, were married last June.