SEATTLE – It would be hard to find an assistant coach that Chris Petersen has outright fired in his decade-plus head coaching career.

Since coming to Washington after the 2013 season Petersen has only made five changes to his staff. Of those only Brent Pease, who held various titles on his staff at Boise State – assistant head coach, wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator – from 2006-2011, was essentially fired.

Following the 2015 season, where no UW receiver finished with more than 700 yards for a second consecutive season, Petersen announced that Pease would not return for a third season.

On the same day, December 4, Petersen lost his defensive line coach Jeff Choate. He became the head coach at Montana State University which created another void on the Huskies staff.

His solution: return the program to what made it great.

Petersen named Ikaika Malloe, a former safety at UW from 1993-96 who was an assistant at Utah State, as the Huskies DL coach. It was a straight forward decision to change the culture in the trenches.

Before Malloe joined the staff UW hadn’t signed a recruit from his native state of Hawaii. In less than 72 hours the Huskies will have signed six in the last two recruiting classes including five players on defense.

The 2019 class alone features a pair of interior linemen from Honolulu, Hawaii that weigh a combined 630-pounds. Coupled with four-star Pittsburg (Calif.) defensive tackle Jacob Bandes, one of seven four-star recruits on defense in the class, Malloe is slated to sign one if not the best DL class to date.