Tag: usc athletics

USC’s Eddie Czaplicki named a 2024 college football All-American

In a brutal season for USC, a few really bright lights stood out. Eddie Czaplicki is one of them, and he is now an All-American. Congratulations, Eddie!

The 2024 football season has been a disastrous one for USC. Despite the team’s 6-6 record, however, one Trojan will still be taking home hardware. On Wednesday, USC senior punter Eddie Czaplicki was officially named a First Team All-American by The Athletic. He becomes the 177th All-American in school history. Czaplicki is also just the second USC punter to earn such honors, with the lone other being Tom Malone in 2003.

This season, Czaplicki averaged 48.5 yards per punt, good for third most in the country. His 45.7 net yards average led the FBS.

Czaplicki is the seventh Trojan to earn First Team All-American honors under head coach Lincoln Riley. In 2022, quarterback Caleb Williams, offensive linemen AndrewVorhees and Brett Neilon, defensive lineman Tuli Tuipulotu, and safety Calen Bullock all received such recognition. Last year, Zachariah Branch was named a First Team All-American at kick returner.

USC will conclude its 2024 season against Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 27.

USC makes top four for coveted defensive lineman in transfer portal

USC has so many needs to address in the portal. There’s a beefy, powerful defensive lineman who is considering the Trojans.

As they say, the transfer portal giveth and the transfer portal taketh. With USC football set to lose a significant batch of talent in the transfer portal, the Trojans will have to counter that by bringing in talent from other schools.

Earlier this week, USC took a first step toward rebuilding its roster when the Trojans made the top four for highly-touted defensive line transfer Keeshawn Silver.

After starting his college career out at North Carolina, Silver spent the past two seasons at Kentucky. He had the best year of his career in 2024, recording 14 tackles and one sack.

In addition to USC, Silver’s top four consisted of Florida, Michigan, and Miami.

On3 ranks Silver as a top-30 available player in the portal. He will have one year of eligibility remaining at his new school.

The Trojans are set to lose starting defensive linemen Jamil Muhammad, Nate Clifton, and Gavin Meyer, all of whom are out of eligibility. Given the importance of being strong along line of scrimmage in order to compete in the Big Ten, it will be crucial that the Trojans address their need at the position this offseason.

Eric Gentry hints at return for Las Vegas Bowl

Eric Gentry could play in the Las Vegas Bowl without burning his redshirt status for 2025.

It was recently announced that USC football will conclude its 2024 season with a matchup against Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl. The Trojans have not had Eric Gentry on the field for the past two months. Is that actually going to change for the bowl game?

While an exciting matchup on paper, the status of the Trojans’ roster for the game against Texas A&M is very much up in the air. With a dozen players already in the transfer portal and questions regarding which NFL-bound guys will suit up for one final game, USC’s roster is likely to be a shell of itself when the Trojans take the field in Las Vegas on December 27.

However, it appears the Trojans may be getting one piece of good news with regard to their bowl game roster in the potential return of Eric Gentry.

Gentry was one of USC’s top defensive players through the first four games of the year. After dealing with concussions, however, Gentry announced his plan to redshirt the season and come back next year.

At the time of the announcement, it was presumed that Gentry was done for 2024. Last week, however, he fired off a series of tweets suggesting that he could return for the Vegas Bowl, including one that simply read, “Bowl Gameeeeeee”.

Gentry has already appeared in four games, the maximum number that would allow him to preserve his redshirt. However, the NCAA changed its policy within the last two years so that bowl games do not count toward this requirement, meaning that Gentry could play in the game and still be eligible to return next year.

USC and Texas A&M will square off at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Friday, December 27 at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time.

College football analyst shares damning quote on Lincoln Riley’s USC tenure

National college football analyst Ari Wasserman of On3 Sports is shocked by how bad Lincoln Riley has been at USC. Welcome to the club.

It’s safe to say that Lincoln Riley’s USC football tenure thus far has gone nowhere near according to plan.

When the Trojans offered Riley a nine-figure contract three years ago to ditch the prairie of Norman, Oklahoma for the Hollywood spotlight, the expectation was that he would restore the Trojans’ program to their glory of years past. After four conference titles and three College Football Playoff appearances in five years at Oklahoma, the Trojans fully expected him to build a similarly dominant program there.

The result has been something completely different.

After a successful 11-3 debut campaign in 2022, the Trojans have gone just 14-11 over the past two seasons. USC has yet to win a conference title or make the playoff, despite it being expanded to 12 teams this year. While recruiting has certainly been better than it was under Clay Helton, Riley has yet to sign a top-five class at USC, something that it was expected he would do on a regular basis when he was hired.

Following a loss to Notre Dame and another meh signing day last week, national college football analyst Ari Wasserman of On3 Sports offered a damning quote regarding Riley’s USC tenure to date.

“It’s not that I was wrong about how Lincoln Riley would do as USC’s head coach that bugs me,” Wasserman said on Twitter. “It’s how truly awful it has been that blows my mind.”

Riley will be given a chance to turn things around at USC. With a buyout reportedly worth more than $80 million, the head coach is not going anywhere just yet.

But plain and simple, the results have been nowhere near good enough thus far. Unless Riley is able to execute a remarkable turnaround, it appears the Trojans will be no better than a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten team moving forward.

USC loses starting offensive lineman to transfer portal

Mason Murphy goes to the transfer portal, adding to the uncertainties surrounding USC’s offensive line for 2025.

On Monday, USC football starting offensive lineman Mason Murphy became the latest Trojan to enter the NCAA transfer portal.

After redshirting his first year on campus in 2021, Murphy has appeared in every game for the Trojans over the past three seasons. In 2024, he started all 12 regular season contests at right tackle.

Much like the rest of USC’s offensive line, Murphy’s 2024 season was a bit of a rocky affair.  His PFF grade for the season was 55.5, according to 247Sports.

Murphy was set to be USC’s most experienced returner on the offensive line in 2025. Now, with him hitting the portal and both Jonah Monheim and Emmanuel Pregnon moving on to the NFL, the Trojans will return just two starters from the struggling unit: Alani Noa and Elijah Paige.

Prior to this year, Lincoln Riley had expressed hesitancy to building an offensive line through the transfer portal. But given the current state of USC’s room, it appears he will not have much of a choice. The Trojans will need to go out and acquire some serious talent at the position if they want to have any shot at competing in the Big Ten next season.

Plain and simple, the Trojans have not recruited well enough at offensive line under Riley and Josh Henson. The majority of USC’s best offensive linemen of the past few years—Andrew Vorhees, Brett Neilon, Justin Dedich, and Monheim—have all been holdovers from the Clay Helton era.

While Riley and Henson have hit on a few transfers—namely Bobby Haskins and Pregnon—there have been far more whiffs than hits. Until that changes, with both transfers and high school recruits, the Trojans are not going to be serious contenders.

Transfer portal exits accumulate, dealing blow to USC’s depth

A prominent receiver and pass rusher are entering the transfer portal. Lincoln Riley will have to hit the portal to fill some of these roster losses.

With the offseason on the horizon, one of many questions starting to arise for USC football was the Trojans’ wide receiver depth heading into 2025. This past week, those questions became an even bigger issue when redshirt junior wideout Kyron Hudson announced his plans to enter the transfer portal.

Although he never got a ton of accolades or hype, Hudson has quietly been a solid contributor for the Trojans the past two seasons. He had the best year of his career to date in 2024 catching 38 passes for 462 yards and three touchdowns. Perhaps Hudson’s most memorable moment in Cardinal and Gold was his incredible one-handed catch against LSU earlier this season.

Now, Hudson will look elsewhere for his final season of eligibility. And with it, questions arise about USC’s wide receiver depth.

Barring a surprise transfer, the Trojans are currently slated to return their quartet of rising juniors in Zachariah Branch, Ja’Kobi Lane, Makai Lemon, and Duce Robinson. However, with Hudson transferring and Kyle Ford out of eligibility, USC will bring back just one other wide receiver who has caught more than one pass this year: rising senior Jay Fair, who finished the regular season with eight catches for 78 yards and one touchdown.

As we have seen over the past few years, the Lincoln Riley’s offenses are most successful when the quarterback spreads the ball around to different wideouts. The Trojans had seven wide receivers with double digit receptions in 2022, and eight in 2023. Hence, it will be critical that Riley add more depth at the position in the transfer portal this offseason.

USC’s offensive outlook is murky. It’s the same for the defense after pass rusher Sam Greene declared his intent to enter the transfer portal.

Lincoln Riley has talked about building his program through recruiting, but more departures mean Riley must make more portal additions than he had probably hoped.

Oregon Big Ten title should make USC fans angry

Dan Lanning and Oregon are actually doing the things Lincoln Riley was hired to do at USC. It’s the harsh but obvious truth.

It has now been more than 16 months since it was announced that USC and Oregon would be joining the Big Ten Conference together in 2024. At the time of the announcement, USC football and Oregon football appeared to be in similar places. Both were coming off of double-digit win seasons under first-year head coaches, were recruiting well, and appeared poised for long-term success.

Since then, however, the Trojans and Ducks have gone in completely different directions.

Since the start of the 2023 season, Oregon is 25-2. On Saturday evening, the Ducks defeated Penn State to win the Big Ten championship in their first season in the league and lock up the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff.

USC, meanwhile, is just 14-11 the past two years. At 6-6 this year, the Trojans barely even made a bowl game, and were nowhere near the playoff.

The unfortunate truth for USC fans is that Dan Lanning is doing at Oregon exactly what Lincoln Riley was hired to do at USC.

The Ducks have recruited elite talent. They consistently have high-level quarterback play. They are extremely physical along the lines of scrimmage. They have a culture of toughness and discipline.

The Trojans? Not so much. USC had a great season with Caleb Williams in 2022, but the Trojans have yet to prove that they can field an elite team in the trenches. USC has been dominated along the lines of scrimmage on numerous occasions under Riley, and there have not been enough recruiting wins to suggest that is going to change in the imminent future.

For decades, USC has been the premier football program on the West Coast. Right now, Dan Lanning and the Ducks are stuffing the Trojans into a locker. Given how much Riley is getting paid, USC fans have every right to be furious with the results.

Eric Musselman offers blunt assessment of USC’s season outlook

Eric Musselman knows he does not have a full plate of options at USC in his first season. The Trojans are fighting an uphill battle all the way.

It has not been the best start to the season for Eric Musselman and the USC men’s basketball team.

On Wednesday night, the Trojans fell 68-60 at home to Oregon in the first Big Ten game for both programs. With the loss, USC fell to 5-4 on the season. With only three more nonconference buy games left before conference play gets into full swing, things are not looking great for the Trojans in Year 1 under Musselman.

Following the loss, Musselman was asked by Luca Evans of the Orange County Register about his outlook for this year’s team, and he gave an extremely honest assessment.

“I don’t know how many Big Ten games we’re gonna win,” Musselman said. “What I do know is, if you put forth that effort—from a culture standpoint, you know—I don’t think any, you walk out of the building, you think the team played hard, you think the team played hard, you think the team gave great effort, and you think the team didn’t close the game. Which we didn’t.

“We were right there. And like I said, if you lead for 30 minutes, it’s the last 10 minutes of play that we’re not used to winning as a unit.

“There’s probably going to be other nights that we play really well, and whether we can walk away with the win or not, I don’t know in year one. But the effort was there, other than defensively, down the stretch.”

Given Musselman’s prior success at Arkansas and Nevada, the Trojans’ program should be in good hands long term. But if early results are any indication, USC fans might need to wait a year or two before the victories start to come in.

Lincoln Riley knows he needs to make the USC QB room better in 2025

Lincoln Riley is mapping out his plan for the 2025 quarterback room at USC, but the one thing which matters should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

USC football and Lincoln Riley are in an interesting spot at the quarterback position heading into 2025. Miller Moss, who started the first nine games of the season for the Trojans, announced his plans to enter the transfer portal earlier this week. With third stringer Jake Jensen also planning to transfer, USC has just one scholarship quarterback set to return next season: Jayden Maiava.

Maiava, who transferred to USC from UNLV ahead of the 2024 season, started the final three games of the regular season for the Trojans. He will presumably start USC’s bowl game as well, and will return as a redshirt junior next fall.

The Trojans also just signed Husan Longstreet, a five-star quarterback in the class of 2025. Longstreet will enroll a semester early at USC, and begin practicing with the Trojans leading up to the bowl game. He will look to compete for playing time as a true freshman in the fall.

With just two scholarship quarterbacks currently on the roster heading into the spring, USC will need to add depth at the position. On Wednesday, Riley confirmed that USC will look to add a player in the transfer portal at the position.

However, Riley also expressed confidence in the two quarterbacks currently on the roster. Based on the sound of his comments, it seems as though USC will look to add a depth piece at the position, rather than a high-profile commodity.

“We obviously have a ton of confidence in both [Maiava] and Husan,” Riley said. “We’re gonna put a lot of emphasis, a lot of reps, a lot of time into those two guys.”

While Maiava should seemingly be the front runner to win the job, USC’s quarterback competition will certainly be an interesting story to follow when spring practice rolls around.

One fact shows why USC football fell short in the Big Ten this year

USC placed just one player on the Big Ten’s first team this year, and it was the punter. Few facts will tell a simpler story about the Trojans in 2024.

There are many indicators and telling facts which explain why USC football fell woefully short in Big Ten football competition this year. Earlier this week, the Big Ten announced its all-conference football teams for the 2024 season.

In a rather fitting development just one Trojans made the first team. Who was it, you ask? Why, that would be punter Eddie Czaplicki, of course.

Czaplicki being the lone Trojan to earn all-conference honors was a rather fitting microcosm of USC’s season. The Trojans struggled offensively throughout the year, with Czaplicki frequently needing to bail them out in terms of field position.

Two USC players did earn second team all-Big Ten honors: offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon and running back Woody Marks. The Trojans also had four players on the third team: offensive lineman Jonah Monheim, cornerback Jaylin Smith, long snapper Hank Pepper, and return specialist Makai Lemon.

In addition, Lemon was an all-conference honorable mention at wide receiver. Also earning honorable mention recognition were linebacker Easton Macarena’s-Arnold, offensive lineman Elijah Paige, tight end Lake McRee, safety Kmari Ramsey, and defensive lineman Gavin Meyer.

The Trojans finished the regular season 6-6, and await their bowl game destination.