Mocs' Fuller had tough times of his own

Adam Fuller can relate to what the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team has gone through in recent years. The Mocs' defensive coordinator knows what it's like to lose more than you win.

He also knows what it's like to go through a coaching change.

In his four-year career (1994-97) at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., Fuller's teams were 12-27. The Mocs have a similar record of 12-33 over the past four years. The key difference, however, is that the Pioneers' program didn't begin until 1991, while UTC has 100 seasons in its history.

"We weren't very good and we went through a coaching change (after) my junior year, but we didn't win many games," said Fuller, a native of Tewksbury, Mass. "We went 1-9 my senior year.

"My sophomore year we had a chance to be pretty good, but in the fifth game, we were 2-2, we had a chance to win the game in the fourth quarter and we didn't, and that was kind of the breaking point of that season."

Still, as he helps new Mocs coach Russ Huesman try to rebuild and re-energize the long-struggling program, Fuller understands what the players have been enduring. He hopes and thinks that can help them.

"I knew how it was," he said, "to be on a team and be very prideful and to see how things weren't working well and how much that hurt."

Fuller, a criminal justice major, said he never really planned to go into coaching, at least not until after he took the Massachusetts State Police entrance exam after his senior year.

"I took the test, and a couple of days after the test I was speaking to my family and I said there's no way I want to do this," he said. "I wanted to be in football."

Fuller arrived at UTC with more head coaching experience than Huesman. Fuller was on the staff at Richmond with Huesman from 2005 to '07 and was the head coach at Division II Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., last season.

That year of being the boss was a valuable experience, he said.

"You take a job like that and you go from worrying about the defense or linebackers or the special teams to worrying about the whole team," he said. "But even though you have to worry about everybody, it was really more about the one-on-one interaction that I had with the players -- getting to know each kid and each family.

"Where I thought I would spend less one-on-one time as a head coach, I spent more, and it made me pay attention to the individual person and improve my communication skills. ... I loved being a head coach."