James Patton, who has been a quality control assistant at Pitt the past two seasons, has been named offensive line coach at Eastern Michigan.

Patton has 26 years of coaching experience, including seven at Northwestern, four at Indiana University and seven at Oklahoma.

“I feel very fortunate to be able to say that coach James Patton is our offensive line coach here at Eastern Michigan,” coach Chris Creighton said. “He lives what we look for in a coach – he cares deeply about his players, he knows how to make his players better, and he will attract our kind of guys to our program in recruiting.”

Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi tweeted his approval of Patton’s move up the coaching ladder:

“Great hire. So happy and appreciative of all the work Coach Patton put in at Pitt. EMU got a great one!!”

Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jerry at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.

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