Jon Carvin joins Paul Petrino’s University of Idaho football staff as the Vandals’ offensive line coach after spending three seasons at Illinois during a time when the Illini were setting school records and finding their way to the top of NCAA offensive statistics.

For Petrino and Carvin, it is a reunion in Moscow.

“Coach Carvin was with me at Illinois,” said Petrino, who was the offensive coordinator at Illinois in 2010-11. “He’s a young coach who reminds me a lot of myself when I coach here; a lot of the other young coaches that we had here.”

Petrino said Carvin’s energy and commitment made him a logical candidate for the job.

“He has great energy,” Petrino said. “He loves to sit in the meeting room with you until all hours of the night just learning football.”

Carvin has worked his way up the ranks of college football. His coaching career started at Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute where he was a defensive intern for two seasons (outside linebackers in 2005 and defensive ends in 2006). From Worcester, he went to Lafayette College where he coached defensive backs in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, he moved to linebackers and worked with the punt return team.

Success has been a part of his path. At Lafayette, the Leopards were the top-ranked FCS defense in 2007 and the secondary led the Patriot League in 2007 and 2008.

He made the move to offense when he made the move to Illinois. As an assistant to offensive line coach Joe Gilbert, Carvin helped guide a line that paved the way for school records in total points and points per game as well as Mikel Leshoure’s school-record 1,697 yards rushing in 2010. That same season, with Petrino as the offensive coordinator, the Illini were the Big Ten rushing leader and finished 11^th nationally in rushing. In 2011, tackle Jeff Allen was a second-round NFL draft choice.

Carvin is a 2004 graduate of the University of Albany (New York), where he was a two-year starter at outside linebacker during Albany’s back-to-back (2002, 2003) Northeast Conference championship seasons. He and his wife, Lisa, have one daughter, Kinsie.