Inside The Huskies

Oregon State Football Is Turning Into Huskies South

JaMarcus Shephard is filling out a staff with multiple UW connections.
Dan Raley|
Cort Dennison rushes Oregon State QB Ryan Katz in 2010. Dennison is now a Beavers coach.
Cort Dennison rushes Oregon State QB Ryan Katz in 2010. Dennison is now a Beavers coach. | Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

As the JaMarcus Shephard coaching staff takes shape, Oregon State football is quickly turning into Huskies South.

On Thursday, the high-energy former University of Washington receivers coach hired former Huskies linebacker Cort Dennison to be his linebackers coach and one-time UW quality control coach Mitch Dahlen to be his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.

Earlier, Shephard hired ex-Huskies defensive-line coach Inoke Breckterfield in the same capacity in Corvallis, where Breckterfield once played his college ball.

On top of that, former UW receiver Rome Odunze, who played for Shephard in Montlake, pulled on a customized orange hat with a W on it and got into the spirit of things by sending him an online message.

"Super excited when i heard the news, and [saw the] graphics and all that -- congratulations to you," said Odunze, who now plays for the Chicago Bears. "I remember when you sat down with me, JP [Ja'Lynn Polk] and JMac {Jalen McMillan] and others, and said you wanted to be a head coach. You worked for that, persevered and got it done. Super happy for you, man. Congratulations. Go Beavs!"

Dennison comes to Shephard's staff from Idaho, where he was the defensive coordinator. and previously coached at Oregon, Louisville (twice), Utah and Missouri State.

He played for the Huskies in 2007-11 for coaches Tyrone Willingham and Steve Sarkisian and was a 30-game starter as a 6-foot-1, 234-pound linebacker from Salt Lake City. He finished his career in the Alamo Bowl with 15 tackles against Baylor.

Dahlen spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons at the UW as a quality control coach, coming with Kalen DeBoer from Fresno State and following DeBoer to Alabama.

Dahlen is a Redmond, Oregon native, who was a quarterback for Utah and Southern Utah. His father Chris was a Beavers offensive lineman in 1983-86 and his son Matt was an OSU walk-on basketball player in 2015-17.

"I have spent many Saturdays in the stands at old Parker Stadium and to see how far this place has come is amazing," Dahlen said in a school release. "The history of this football program has been in my blood since I was a kid, and I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity to lead this offense."

Shephard, of course, spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons at UW on DeBoer's staff and went with him to Alabama for the past two seasons.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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