Laney: Peveto right at home in Natchitoches

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Aug 3, 2009

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Bradley Dale Peveto still knows the lunch lady at Texas’ Orangefield High School, his alma mater.

If he’s down that way, he might stop by his old stomping grounds for turkey gumbo.

“They’ll let me get three bowls,” said the first-year Northwestern State football coach.

That’s Peveto. The more down home the setting, the more at home he is.

It might be appropriate that he’s the coach at Northwestern State, the down-home Football Championship Subdivision school in tiny Natchitoches, instead of a defensive coordinator in the SEC.

Peveto and Doug Mallory had one ill-fated year as LSU’s co-defensive coordinators last season and Peveto wound up back with the Demons, where his three years as defensive coordinator in the late 1990s were quite successful.

“That secondary we had when I was there, most of them are still playing,” Peveto said of his Northwestern teams. Back then, he had players like Kenny Wright, Keith Thibodeaux and Jermaine Jones, all who played in the NFL.

“Good players will overcome coaching,” he said, “and in the years I was a good coach, I had good players.”

And Peveto knows how to find players for a school that doesn’t get the pick of the litter.

Where LSU’s recruiting board is almost full this year, Northwestern has no commitments, nor would it expect any. Everybody who might be targeted on the Demons’ recruiting board is still holding out hope for a “big-time offer.” And if the player fits the description — big, strong and fast — he will get that offer.

So in the back roads of FCS football, it’s all about finding the guy who isn’t quite fitting the prototype, but who might someday get there. Maybe the athletic high school quarterback who might make a good college defensive back. Maybe the 240-pound prep lineman who has the frame to comfortably carry 290 pounds in a couple of years.

Lache Seastrunk isn’t going to Northwestern State, so these are the guys Peveto will look for now.

“To be honest with you, when I got to LSU, I had to learn how to recruit that level, because I was looking at all those guys that I was trying to project because that’s how I cut my teeth,” said Peveto, who was at LSU four years total, three as linebackers coach/special teams coordinator. “I was projecting those guys, (mentally) putting weight on them, getting taller, getting faster, getting bigger. And you don’t really need to do that at that level.”