New Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert has moved closer to put together his staff for the 2025 season. Wake adds two new assistant coaches to the staff this week and we get closer to presumed completion.
The school announced this week that T.J. Hollowell is coming to the Demon Deacons staff as an assistant coach and defensive ends coach. Wake did not previously have an assistant specific to the defensive end position, so technically this is a new spot for the coaching staff.
Wake Adds Two New Assistant Coaches
Defensive Ends
Hollowell was at Nebraska in 2024. He was the recruiting coordinator at his alma mater. He helped bring in the Cornhuskers’ highest-ranked recruiting class in four years.
Hollowell was a defensive analyst for Michigan State from 2020-2023 working under Scott Hazelton, who is also the new defensive coordinator at Wake Forest. Hollowell spent 2018-19 as a defensive ends and linebackers coach at Coastal Carolina.
He spent several years coaching at the high school level in Texas and California.
The former starter at linebacker for Nebraska, Hollowell signed with the New York Giants as a free agent in 2004 and spent two seasons in the NFL. He played a season for the Giants and a season for the Jets. He also spent two seasons playing with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.
Hollowell is a native of Copperas Cove, Texas.
Linebackers
Dickert also named a new linebackers coach this week. Adam Pilapil worked with Dickert at Wyoming in 2019. Hazelton was originally signed responsibility for the linebackers when he took the new job. That will now go to Pilapil, who played linebacker for Wyoming from 2015-2018. That last season in Laramie he played on Hazelton’s defense.
His coaching experience includes the last three seasons at Colorado State as the linebackers coach. In 2021 he was assistant defensive line coach at Montana State. While with the Bobcats, he worked with the new Wake Forest safety’s coach Freddie Banks.
In 2020, he was a graduate assistant at Kansas State. His first coaching job was as a defensive quality control coach for Dickert at Wyoming.
As a player at Wyoming from 2015-2018, Pilapil was Academic All-Conference all four years. He is a native of Torrance, CA.
Dickert has now named 13 assistant coaches to his new staff at Wake Forest.
Main Image: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports
