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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.

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.

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.