Illinois RBs coach Scheelhaase to be retained as assistant under Bill Cubit

Illinois running backs coach Nathan Scheelhaase will be retained as an assistant coach under new Fighting Illini coach Bill Cubit, according to a source.

Illinois running backs coach Nathan Scheelhaase will be retained as an assistant coach under new Fighting Illini coach Bill Cubit, according to a source.

Scheelhaase, 25, was promoted to assistant less than a week before Illinois’s opener this season. The move came after former coach Tim Beckman was fired and replaced by Cubit on an interim basis.

Cubit had his interim tag removed last week and led his team to a better than expected 5–7 record this season. Scheelhaase had returned to Illinois, his alma mater, in May as the program’s assistant director of football operations.

Scheelhaase was the Fighting Illini’s starting quarterback from 2010–13, his last of which was under Cubit’s tenure as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Scheelhaase is the school’s leader in career total offense (10,634 yards) and ranks seventh all-time in that category in the Big Ten.

He is also the only signal-caller in school history to lead the program to bowl victories in consecutive years and just one of two players in Big Ten history with over 8,000 passing yards and 2,000 rushing yards in his career. After leaving Illinois, Scheelhaase was a high school pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville.

Prior to Cubit's arrival in Champaign in 2013 as offensive coordinator, he was head coach for eight seasons at Western Michigan, where he had a 51–47 record with three bowl appearances, one more than the school had ever had previously.