Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino filled his lone coaching-staff vacancy this week with Mike Mallory, who most recently was defensive coordinator at Illinois.

Mallory would serve as linebackers coach at KU, Mangino announced Tuesday. The hiring fills the void left by Dave Doeren, who took a similar position last month at Wisconsin.

“He is a perfect fit for our young linebackers and defensive scheme,” Mangino said in a statement. “We are very pleased to have Mike join our coaching staff.”

Mallory spent the last five years at Illinois before being let go last month by first-year Illini coach Ron Zook. Before that, Mallory had coaching stints at Maryland, Northern Illinois, Rhode Island, Eastern Illinois and Kent State. All of his stops had him coaching linebackers at some point.

Mallory, the son of former college head coach Bill Mallory, was a two-time All-Big Ten selection at Michigan in the mid-1980s. He coached last year at Illinois alongside Ed Warinner, a former offensive line coach at KU.

¢ Lineman leaves: Offensive lineman Adam Welty, a freshman who took a red-shirt season in 2005, has left the program to pursue a career in the ministry. Welty, a Newton native, was one of the state’s top prospects as a high school senior and picked KU early in the recruiting process. He’s the third member of the Jayhawks to leave the team after the Fort Worth Bowl in December – tight end Josh Bell transferred to Houston, and utility man Charles Gordon entered the NFL Draft.

¢ New gig: Former KU quarterback Bill Whittemore has broken into the college coaching ranks. According to a report on footballscoop.com, Whittemore recently was hired to be a graduate assistant at Louisiana-Monroe, an NCAA Division I-A school in the Sun Belt Conference. Whittemore’s ties to ULM come from Indians coach Charlie Weatherbie, whose son Jonas was a KU quarterback when Whittemore was in Lawrence.