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The old is new for Greg Nord.

"Whenever you can turn off Cooper Drive and turn in to home and know I've walked these paths, it makes it a lot easier transition," he said.

On Thursday the former Kentucky player and assistant coach met with the media for the first time since being hired back to UK by his good friend Joker Phillips to coach the special teams and tight ends.

"This was something I think we both saw as a very real possibility at times in our career. There's been several opportunities in both of our careers where we both tried to get each other on different staffs...time didn't present itself to get together, until now," he said.

Nord previously worked as an assistant at Kentucky under Jerry Claiborne and Fran Cursi. He spent last season on the staff at Illinois and before that 15 years at Louisville as an assistant coach.

Nord will replace fired assistant coach Randy Ortmayer, who coached the special teams and tight ends under Rich Brooks.

"I think the one thing you have to do on special teams is you have to attack," Nord said.

Step one with the tight ends is to find out who will replace the top three producers at the position from last season. T.C. Drake, Maurice Grinter, and Ross Bogue all were lost to graduation.

"I was in a similar situation to this one year when I lost two NFL players and had three freshmen coming in that had never played a down and those three guys were going to have to play for us. They came in, they did, we won the conference, we won the bowl game and all three of those guys eventually went on and played in the NFL," Nord said.

Nord also has earned a reputation as an aggressive recruiter. That should help him fit in with his new staff.

"The thing that I think is most attractive about recruiting [at Kentucky] is, you stop and look at it, we have a very good recruiting staff. We actually have eight guys on our staff that served as recruiting coordinators at their schools," he said.

Nord will have to go on a crash course to get ready for the opening of fall camp in three weeks. He says he's already started looking at film of last year's games and met with a few of his special team players Thursday morning.

"I think I'm fortunate in that I know a lot of the players, and am familiar with their hometowns and some of the backgrounds they had. I recruited a lot of the same guys. Fortunately for me now I didn't get them," he said.

One of the things Nord has always liked about Phillips is the way he continues to raise and then exceed expectations. That means taking Kentucky to a level they've rarely reached before.

"If I did not think that was the goal of [Athletic Director Mitch] Barnhart, Coach Phillips and the whole community I would not have wanted to come back. Because I'm not coming back here to my school to be mediocre, I'm coming back here to be the best there is."