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Utah's Kaelin Clay returned to the sideline after circling backward on a punt return that did not end well in the fourth quarter of the Las Vegas Bowl. Defensive coordinator Kalani Sitake walked over to Clay and pointed downfield in the other direction in a case of good-natured teasing, while smiling and patting him on the helmet.

Sitake seemingly always has the right touch with his players, and that's what the Utes will miss about him as he joins Gary Andersen's Oregon State coaching staff. Defensively speaking, Utah can absorb the loss of Sitake. In the bigger context of the program, his move creates big some holes.

Sitake's recruiting ability and his role in mentoring Polynesian athletes — although his influence surely was not exclusive to them — will be difficult to replace. It also hurts that he's joining a Pac-12 rival that will compete with the Utes in recruiting, in and out of Utah.

The Utes had only 72 hours to enjoy the Las Vegas Bowl rout of Colorado State that punctuated their 9-4 season before this news came. The moves of Sitake and defensive line coach Ilaisa Tuiaki to OSU are Ute coach Kyle Whittingham's biggest staffing hits since the 2009 Sugar Bowl. Looking back, the most critical losses that year — in order — were offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig, offensive line coach Charlie Dickey and Andersen, the defensive coordinator.

Nobody would have listed them in that order at the time. The updated ranking is both a tribute to Sitake's work as Andersen's successor and a commentary about Utah's continual search for offensive leadership. I'm also saying that the proven consistency of Whittingham's defensive system should make replacing the coordinator fairly routine. After seven years as a full-time coach in the program, Morgan Scalley is capable of directing the scheme.

That's not to minimize Sitake's overall impact. Utah followers more easily could have accepted Sitake's becoming a head coach somewhere, as opposed to a lateral move as a Pac-12 coordinator. Yet in the coaching profession, the perception is that Whittingham runs the Ute defense. That factor shouldn't be overlooked, in analyzing why Sitake would make this move for the sake of his career trajectory.

Andersen himself looked into other jobs, partly motivated by such ambitions, before becoming Utah State's head coach. In turn, maybe his biggest breakthrough in Logan came when he distanced himself from the defensive operation in 2012, giving Dave Aranda full control. Andersen is promising to give Sitake that degree of responsibility, which is significant, as I study what he told The Tribune's Matthew Piper: "It's his defense. Period, exclamation point, end of story."

Andersen is bringing Chad Kauha'aha'a with him from Wisconsin, and Derrick Odum, another former Ute assistant, is coming from SMU. So the Beavers will resemble Utah defensively, led by a diverse, talented staff. Oregon State will visit the Utes in 2015 and host them in '16, then the schools will miss one another the following two seasons in the Pac-12 scheduling rotation.

Those upcoming meetings already were going to be intriguing with Andersen opposing Whittingham, and now there's the dynamic of Sitake's defense trying to stop Dave Christensen's offense on Halloween Night at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Sitake is such a humble, likable person that Ute fans may have trouble hoping he fails, even against their team. I'll always remember him walking out of the stadium after Utah's 2013 upset of No. 5 Stanford, holding his child's hand and deflecting congratulations.

To him, it is always about the players — the Beavers, now. Not the Utes. That will take some getting used to.

Twitter: @tribkurt