Gamecocks to add ace special teams coach with long head coach resume
Even when he was a head coach, Pete Lembo was a stickler for special teams. He oversaw everything, but he often got into the nitty gritty on punts or kickoffs, getting a player’s feet in the right spot or drilling a particular technique.
Now he’ll bring those talents to Shane Beamer’s first South Carolina football staff, The State confirmed via a source.
Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel, citing sources, first reported Saturday evening via Twitter that “Pete Lembo has agreed to become the special teams coach and associate head coach at South Carolina.”
Lembo most recently worked at Memphis, where he turned the Tigers into a special teams powerhouse of late.
His 2019 unit was second in the FPI special teams efficiency rankings and top-10 in one FootballOutsiders metric.
And he brings a lengthy resume to Columbia.
Lembo worked his way up as a head coach in the small-school world, turning around programs in Lehigh (44-14 in five years), Elon (35-22 with a playoff trip and top-10 finish in Year 4) and Ball State (25 wins in Years 1-3, 33-29 overall).
After departing Ball State, he worked as an assistant at Maryland, Rice and now Memphis, where he was hired by current Florida State coach Mike Norvell and stayed on with Ryan Silverfield.
Beyond a considerable special teams background, he’s also got the ability to apply some of his head coaching background to help fill gaps anywhere Beamer needed. His three tenures also featured up-tempo versatile spread attacks.
Lembo is the second publicly known on-field staffer Beamer has signed, joining Erik Kimrey.
This story was originally published December 26, 2020 at 7:34 PM.
