Southern Illinois's Melvin Rice named new cornerbacks coach at NIU

Southern Illinois cornerbacks coach Melvin Rice will have the same position under Northern Illinois coach Rod Carey according to a source.

It’s a return to Northern Illinois for Rice, who was a cornerback for the Huskies from 2005-08 and a graduate assistant in 2010. He replaces former Northern Illinois cornerbacks coach Kelvin Sigler, who left to be an assistant at South Alabama.

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Rice was hired at Southern Illinois last month after spending this past season coaching cornerbacks at Southeast Missouri. Prior to that, he was a defensive quality control assistant at Minnesota for four seasons.

Before Rice’s season as a graduate assistant at Northern Illinois, he was the defensive backs coach at Morgan Park High in Chicago for a year. He briefly played for the Indoor Football League’s Green Bay Blizzard in 2010.

Northern Illinois had an 8–6 record this past season under Carey and reached its sixth straight Mid-American Conference championship game. Carey has a 31–12 record in his three seasons with the Huskies and won a conference championship in 2014.

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