It helps that he's been there, done that

Huskies' Newhall mentoring Palangi

Kevin Newhall (left), a junior from Malden, is serving as a mentor to Brian Palangi, who played at Swampscott High. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

The shuttle runs.

The first step.

The point of attack.

Brian Palangi can't mess those up.

He can't make the stopwatch wait.

He can't step backward when he was supposed to push forward.

He can't tap a defensive tackle on the chest when he was supposed to pump into him like a set of pistons.

"You have to be perfect," he said. "Everything has to be perfect. You take one wrong step - and it's like a millisecond - and you won't make your block."

The pace of the game changes at the college level, and Palangi knew that when he decided to make the jump from Swampscott High to Northeastern University. Now, it's just a matter of adjusting.

Only, there's no universal way to adjust.

"The best way I can describe it," said Huskies head football coach Rocky Hager, "is going from high school is like being a driver in rural Massachusetts on a two-lane road where there isn't a lot going on. Next thing you know you're in the heavy traffic of Boston and all of a sudden you're on a racetrack and things are going 200 miles an hour.

"That's the transition that Brian's going through," he said. "We perceive him as having the intellect and the God-given talents that will end up being skills that will perform very well for us on the field."

Kevin Newhall has been there.

The 6-foot-4-inch, 289-pound offensive tackle was just as overwhelmed as Palangi when he came to Northeastern four years ago as a workhorse out of Malden High.

"It's the same cycle," Newhall said. "You've got to come in there and get in the playbook and learn all the parts of the offense. It's a lot of knowledge to get at first and it can be overwhelming, but you've got to start with the basics and learn from there."

When it comes to Northeastern football, all eyes have been on running back Maurice Murray as he set the school's all-time rushing record. But what made it easier to eat all that grass was having one of the best units on the team busting open holes for him.

Murray has graduated, while the 6-4, 286-pound Palangi is working to earn his place in that wall of blockers.

"I want to learn the offensive plays," he said. "I want to be able to do everything perfectly for next season."

So far, Hager likes what he sees out of Palangi, who lives in Nahant and helped Swampscott High win the Division 3A Super Bowl last year. "He's showing some pretty good skill here in camp; we like what we're seeing out of him," Hager said. "I don't want to say that it's a guarantee that he's going to be a player, but he sure reminds us of people that have come out of our state and been pretty good players for us."

The team gave Palangi a book during training camp. It's only a centimeter thick, but he might as well be reading a Chinese dictionary.

Northeastern's offensive line coach Brian Surace said it's about a familiar subject: playing the offensive line. But right now, everything Palangi learned in high school is as good as gibberish.

The side of the line that used to be the even-numbered holes may be the odd side now. Or they might not even be numbered at all. It might be a word.

"It's just like learning a foreign language," Surace said. "Once they start to understand the language, it's going to be a lot easier."

The coaches threw Newhall into the pressure cooker as soon as he was done with his redshirt season. He won the team's offensive rookie of the year award as a redshirt freshman and was named second-team all-Colonial Athletic Association last year.

"I've come a long way since my first year," said Newhall, now a junior slated to start at right tackle. "My first year here I didn't have any idea what was going on, really. Every year [I'm] just learning more, getting comfortable with what I'm doing."

"We have a bunch of veterans that have played a bunch of football and they are coaching the younger guys and have really taken on a leadership role in that aspect," Surace said.

The coaches are working Palangi at center and guard, and depending on how his frame and athleticism develop in the next few years, there's the possibility he'll end up at tackle.

Surace paired Palangi with Newhall for his college visit last year, seeing they had a lot in common.

"They both have a quiet confidence about themselves," Surace said. "They both are thick, big kids that have some girth. When they strike people they feel it, and when people strike them, they don't move, which is a nice quality to have."

Newhall said he sees potential in Palangi.

"He seems like a really good kid," he said. "I think he's going to be a really good player for us. He's a big kid that's got some size. He moves good, he's got a good attitude, he tries hard."

Palangi knows he can look to Newhall as a blueprint.

"He's been starting for a while, and he knows his stuff," he said. "He's kind of a role model for what I need to look up to."