CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – Southeast Missouri added assistant coaches Todd Drury, Morris Lolar and Drew Maddox to its football staff Friday.  
 
Drury will coach the safeties, Lolar will oversee the cornerbacks and Maddox will coach the defensive line at SEMO. Wes Piersall also joined the staff as Director of Sports Performance.
 
Drury spent the 2023 season as defensive coordinator at Western Illinois University. Prior to WIU, he was head coach at Missouri S&T from 1999-2022. Drury was the Miners' defensive coordinator for the 2017 and 2018 seasons before taking the head coaching position. His defenses were among the top in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, allowing league-bests 292.2 total yards per game in 2018 and 294.3 yards in 2017. Drury also worked as Missouri S&T's defensive line coach during the 2015 campaign.
 
Lolar was defensive coordinator and primarily worked with the defensive backfield at Missouri Valley College a year ago. Before Missouri Valley, he was an assistant coach at Dodge City Community College and worked as the secondary coach for the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouttes for one season (2019). Like Drury, Lolar has previous head coaching experience spending three seasons at the helm of NAIA member Bethel College (Kan.). Other coaching stops for Lolar include Defiance College, Independence CC (defensive coordinator), Texas A&M-Commerce and the Indoor Football League's Wichita Wild.
 
Maddox begins his first Division I coaching position at SEMO after being in the head coaching role for three seasons at NAIA member Louisiana Christian University. During that time, he compiled a 22-16 record and ranked third in program history with a .579 winning percentage. Maddox's 2023 team won a program record nine games and claimed the Sooner Athletic Conference title. He earned multiple coaching honors, including SAC Coach of the Year and American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) NAIA Region 5 Coach of the Year that season. Maddox also played at LCU and was the Wildcats defensive coordinator prior to being named the sixth head LCU history. 
 
Piersall is a 2016 graduate of Big South-OVC Association member Tennessee Tech. He held strength and conditioning positions at LSU, UL Monroe and Texas A&M before taking the SEMO job.
 
Returning coaches Desmond Noird and Cade Brister will assume new roles this upcoming 2024 season. Noird moves from recruiting coordinator to wide receivers coach, while Brister takes over as the Redhawks recruiting coordinator and nickelbacks coach.
 
Dalyn McDonald, who played the last two seasons as a wide receiver at SEMO, remains in Cape Girardeau to be the football program's video coordinator.
 
Conner Justus will be SEMO's next graduate assistant for the offensive line. Justus received his undergraduate degree in Middle School Education at Henderson State University, where he played all four years and started 34-consecutive games.