LOS ANGELES — Two years ago, Lincoln Riley walked into a room at Heritage Hall — the home of USC Athletics — a few weeks into his tenure as the new head coach to talk about a high school recruiting class that had been put together in a flash. After a shocking departure from Oklahoma to Southern California, Riley’s coaching staff was still in flux, the Trojans’ future quarterback was still a question mark, and the process of, as he put it, “building a championship team,” had just begun.
Riley walked into the same room last week and though he had spent more time building this year’s recruiting class, there was a certain feeling of déjà vu in the air. His coaching staff — at least defensively — is still not fully finalized and USC’s future quarterback situation is once again unresolved. Even as Riley once again reiterated that this is all part of USC’s journey to achieving the ultimate goal, he couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of being right back where everything began.
“There’s a part of me that has felt that way,” Riley said of the recruiting approach resembling his first year. “Because a lot of it is brand new, and in some ways, a lot of ways, [we are] starting over.”
Two years into Riley’s hiring, the program has experienced two seasons that have felt like polar opposites.
His debut campaign featured an 11-1 regular season and a Heisman Trophy for Caleb Williams. Despite a humbling loss to Utah in the Pac-12 title game that kept the Trojans out of the College Football playoff, they entered 2023 No. 6 in the country with national title aspirations. But a season that started 6-0 quickly fell apart with five losses in the team’s final six games, punctuated by an in-season defensive coordinator firing and a postseason exodus of former five-star recruits. It has left Riley to revamp a depleted staff and roster while trying to establish a consistent culture.
Add in the fact that the team has just gone through a six-week stretch without a game where it can neither bury its 2023 season, nor break ground on 2024, has created a unique situation for Riley & Co.
“It’s almost like you’re halfway at the end of this year and halfway into next year,” Riley said.
As USC prepares for the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl against Louisville (8 p.m. ET, Fox) to cap a year in which many expected it would be competing in the College Football Playoff, the program is at a pivotal point. The honeymoon period Riley experienced in his first season is over, and while the expected departure of Williams to the NFL sets up the Trojans for a reset, there is plenty to change and fix as USC tries to ensure a disappointing 2023 season becomes an aberration.
IF THERE ARE two moments that sum up USC’s 7-5 season, look no further than its final two games.
On a cold night in Eugene, Oregon, having battled back to within nine points of Oregon after being down 22 to start the fourth quarter, the USC defense needed to do what it was rarely able to all season: get a stop.
With just under four minutes left, Oregon ran twice for a first down before putting itself in a fourth-and-7 situation. Oregon coach Dan Lanning did not flinch and neither did his offense, securing the first down and running down the clock, never letting Williams or USC’s offense near the football again. Any far-fetched chances the Trojans had of sneaking into the Pac-12 title game vanished.
Just a week later, Williams delivered the final fitting image of the season.
Williams’ sophomore season had been replete with Heisman moments. He was a thrilling antidote for any growing pains USC had, and the Trojans were the toast of the sport after going 4-8 before Riley and Williams’ arrival. But when a defense that had forced 28 turnovers in the previous year regressed to the mean and struggled, Williams was unable to be Superman two seasons in a row, finishing with nearly 1,000 fewer passing yards and 12 fewer touchdowns.
So in USC’s final game of the season against UCLA, a 38-20 loss at home, all Williams could do was run off into the tunnel, head bowed, while his arms tried their best to salute the few scattered fans who remained in the Coliseum. Those who witnessed his meteoric ascent far outnumbered those present for his anticlimactic goodbye.
Despite dipping into the transfer portal to grab Oklahoma State linebacker Mason Cobb, Texas A&M defensive lineman Anthony Lucas and Georgia defensive lineman Bear Alexander, the influx didn’t result in a collective improvement for USC’s defense, which finished 117th in the nation at both defending the pass and the run, as well as 111th in SP+ defensive rankings.
And even though it began 6-0, the USC defense surrendered explosive plays left and right that allowed Colorado and Arizona to nearly pull off upsets. Once USC had to travel to South Bend to face Notre Dame, its defense couldn’t bend anymore without breaking. Over the next six games (five losses), the unit allowed an average of 42.8 points, including 52 against Washington. Not even Williams, who alongside an inconsistent offensive line that also regressed in nearly every category, could paper over the mistakes.
Following the loss to Washington, both the results and the pressure — internal and external — were too much for Riley to do anything but fire defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, a move that several boosters had wanted him to make after USC’s loss to Tulane in last year’s Cotton Bowl Classic.
That loss in January seemed to cast an early cloud over this year’s USC team, or at least, put an amount of pressure and expectations it could not live up to, especially defensively. But Riley had also welcomed and even invited those expectations when first arriving in Southern California, saying that the Coliseum would be the mecca of college football and that he didn’t come to USC to “compete for second.”
But as this season progressed and results worsened, his tone shifted.
“We don’t come in every single week talking about winning a national championship, going to the playoffs,” Riley said after USC’s loss to Utah this season. “I don’t know where that narrative starts. … If you let the outside set expectations, you’re always being measured up against that.”
One year and 11 wins in, it was easy to see how Riley’s high barometer for the program could be achieved, perhaps faster than expected. But as losses piled up, the talk of expectations shifted and Riley framed them more as “outside noise” that his team needed to shut out.
“I think it’s fair to say that the team last year probably did overachieve,” Riley said in Salt Lake City. “Everybody expects you to be good. Everybody expects that you can have a championship-caliber team. And when you’re constantly trying to live up to those expectations, you can kind of fall away from maybe what puts you there in that position in the first place.”
Whether it was outside pressure or inside shortcomings, the 2023 season pointed toward one common thread: minor changes were not going to cut it if USC wanted to fulfill both external expectations and its own moving forward. And just as Riley entered the scene in 2021 as the potential savior for the program, USC has tabbed another young coach with the task of saving its defense going forward.
D’ANTON LYNN WON’T even have to change addresses.
The South Bay resident and former UCLA defensive coordinator has already mapped his commute into USC, and it turns out it’s roughly the same as his trip to Westwood. All he’s doing is trading one kind of traffic for another.
The state of USC’s defense following the ousting of Grinch required not just a new voice in the room but an entirely new directive. It led Riley to the Trojans’ crosstown rivals, where a young coach with NFL background had just put together, as Riley put it, “the best front in college football.” Once USC made it official, Lynn wasted no time in putting boots on the ground even if, he admitted, it was strange to go to local schools to recruit the same guys while wearing different colors.
“It’s been a lot,” Lynn said of the past few weeks, speaking with ESPN last week. Less than 24 hours after he was officially hired, he was in Georgia and then Connecticut for recruiting visits.
The whirlwind won’t settle anytime soon. While he initially was surprised Riley and USC would have interest in poaching a rival coach, he was immediately intrigued by the opportunity, not just for his own career, but for getting to be part of overcoming the issue at hand.
“The excitement and the challenge to get a chance to turn that defense around,” Lynn said. “And the potential at a school like that to do it, it was the right move for my career.”
While Lynn said in his opening news conference that the defense is “not that far away from success,” it felt pretty far all season long. But Lynn is being hailed (and paid) as the figure made for the job.
Lynn’s hiring has created a domino effect. USC nabbed North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz to be its new inside linebackers coach and head assistant coach while also hiring Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk to be its new secondary coach.
In the middle of player visits, transfer portal evaluations, finishing his staff and onboarding, Lynn is having to be in multiple modes at once: recruiter, coach and evaluator. After finally watching tape of USC’s games this past week, Lynn said he is looking for things that worked, things that didn’t and, perhaps most importantly, what kind of personnel he’s working with and what kind of personnel he will need to run his defense.
“I like guys that can play multiple spots, do multiple things.” Lynn said. “It helps us be able to get to a bunch of different looks with the same personnel on the field.”
According to Lynn, size will be a crucial requirement, too. As Riley emphasized in his signing day news conference, his nonnegotiable when looking at potential defensive coordinators was someone who “wanted to play bigger on the defensive front,” and this latest recruiting class included plenty of, as Riley called them, “large, large bodies.”
“We’re putting a bigger emphasis on size up front,” Lynn said. “The Big Ten is just a bigger conference in general, and at the end of the day you need to be able to control the line of scrimmage.”
It’s evident that both Lynn and Riley want to fully revamp the USC defense, but both know it will ultimately come down to not just recruiting the right players, but developing them, too. Lynn has only one year of college experience but, between his success at UCLA and the fact that his move has precipitated two UCLA defenders to transfer to USC (safety Kamari Ramsey and cornerback John Humphrey), his reputation is starting to follow him.
“It’s going to be fun to see how he puts his own twist on things,” USC defensive end Jamil Muhammad said after watching tape of UCLA’s defense from this season. “He really showcased their talents with how he used them.”
At the same time, USC has had its share of departures from talented players, too, including five-stars like quarterback Malachi Nelson, defensive end Korey Foreman, cornerback Domani Jackson and, earlier this month, wide receiver and running back Raleek Brown. While Riley admitted to being surprised by Nelson’s choice, Lynn isn’t flinching at any of the departures. As a former coach in the NFL, he is intimately familiar with the ever-changing nature of the sport.
“In the NFL, there are times where I’ve met a guy on Wednesday, he started for me on Sunday and then I say bye to him on Monday,” Lynn said.
Regarding the departures USC has had, Lynn said it has all been “addition by subtraction.”
If there is a clear indictment of USC since the glory days of the Pete Carroll era, it is that its defenses and player development have not resulted in turning five- and four-star prospects into not only great college players, but players who can be part of a system that produces winning teams year after year. Two years into Riley’s tenure, it’s too early to claim the same problem, but shades of those issues have surfaced.
Under Lynn, USC’s defense has begun the overhaul it needed, but the balance between trying to improve right away and build something stable for the long-term future remains as it might take plenty of growing pains and multiple recruiting classes for the results to fully present themselves. Lynn, for his part, is fully committed to the ride.
“I want to play great defense at SC. I want to call plays, I want to coordinate a deep defense,” Lynn said. “I want to build this thing from the ground up.”
JUSTIN DEDICH HAS seen a bit of everything in five years at USC. The offensive lineman, who played center last season, began his time with the team in 2018 is still here, having changed coaches, quarterbacks and positions. He’s taking extra snaps after a bowl practice.
“It’s a weird position to be in because normally, I’m like, I’m going to be here next year,” Dedich said. “I’m on my way out.”
As USC prepares to face Louisville without Williams and a host of other players, the game feels like it carries meaning, not exactly for this season, but for the next.
“I’m doing this to make sure that the tone is set for the beginning of next year,” Dedich said of his commitment to practicing and playing in the bowl game. “It is important, whether it’s recruiting or just, I don’t know, it sets the tone for the year, in my opinion.”
In many ways, Dedich represents both the exemplary recruit USC is after — someone who wants to be developed at one program — but he’s also a dying breed in the face of the transfer portal. Riley has acknowledged as much, even alluding to his recruiting strategy somewhat changing to prioritizing players who “want to be here.”
“The guy that wavers on signing day is going to waver when something doesn’t go his way here. He’s going to waver when he’s not the starter as a true freshman coming right out,” Riley said. “He’s going to waver when somebody on the outside tells him he should look somewhere else. The guys that don’t waver and have a passion for being here, they’re going to hang in there through the ups and downs, they’re going to develop, and then you’re going to look up and down the line they’re going to turn into really good players.”
Riley has remained adamant that he expects USC to taper off its dependence on the portal, opting instead for building its foundation on high school recruiting. But while USC might hope to be headed in that direction eventually, its reality is also clear. With Nelson’s departure, the Trojans will now likely have to dip into the portal for not just one, but two quarterbacks — an older one and a younger one given USC’s next big-time QB recruit is five-star Julian Lewis in the Class of 2026.
“Who we take as that young quarterback is an important decision for this program,” said Riley, who has coached three Heisman winners at the position. “You got to get the right one because the person that takes this could be in a pretty unique position pretty quick, a very advantageous position, very quick.”
Both Riley and Lynn have reiterated their goal to get the “right players” to USC, but in college football as presently constituted, NIL is an inextricable part of that equation. While Riley has praised the growth of USC’s official NIL partner House of Victory, other donors remain split on the NIL strategy. USC, notably, has five different NIL collectives, and there is a feeling among some people involved that a lack of unified force has financially weakened the program’s overall NIL potential.
“We’ve all got to continue to invest in this. We’ve all got to continue to support it,” Riley said while adding they do look for players who are not overly fixated on NIL. “It is a huge piece of this. And certainly, you’re not going to be a national-championship-level program without it.”
It doesn’t take much to see that USC needs plenty to return to playoff conversations, even with a 12-team format next year, let alone national title conversations. And as it finds itself in a spot where it is trying to look ahead while dealing with repercussions of the past, a bowl game win would be far from the cure, but it wouldn’t be a bad start. Even with the 2024 season over eight months away, there’s something to be said for setting the tone by not ending the season the same way last year ended.
Despite the up-and-down nature of the seasons, Riley has remained steadfast that the sole purpose of his hire wasn’t to win a game, a season or even a conference championship. The lofty goals he declared from Day 1 are still there. But for a program that lost five of its past six games (its sole win coming by a single point) and hasn’t won a bowl game since 2017, the turnaround has to start somewhere, even if it is small. A reset might be exactly what USC needs for its long-term success, but in the short term, it’ll have plenty to prove and far more to improve.
“The goal in terms of what we’re building is that one thing,” Riley said last week. “And that’s winning the whole thing.”
In some ways, the first two seasons with Williams were a prelude to the turnaround Riley is actually having to engineer while the college football landscape continues to shape-shift. Now, after experiencing polar opposite seasons in terms of results, the real work begins.
Kristen Shilton is a national NHL reporter for ESPN.
EDMONTON, Alberta — Dallas Stars forward Roope Hintz remains a game-time decision ahead of Game 4 of the Western Conference Final on Tuesday.
The club’s top skater has been sidelined since Game 2 in the series when he took a slash to the left leg from Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse. Hintz took part in warmups before Game 3 on Sunday but exited early and was ruled out. He was back on the ice for Dallas’ optional practice on Monday and told reporters he was “feeling good” and “trying to do everything I can” to get back in for Game 4.
It was early in the third period of Game 2 when Hintz — parked in front of the Oilers’ net — shoved Nurse from behind, and the Oilers’ blueliner responded by swinging his stick at Hintz’s leg. Hintz was down on the ice for several minutes after that before being helped off by Lian Bichsel and Mikael Granlund.
Nurse received a two-minute penalty for the slash on Hintz but no supplementary discipline from the league. The blueliner addressed the incident for the first time Tuesday, explaining it didn’t come with malicious intent.
“I was backing up to net and I got shot in the back. And I think it was just a natural reaction [to respond],” Nurse said. “It’s probably a play that everyone in this room, whether you’re a net-front guy or D man, probably happens a dozen, two dozen times in a year. It’s unfortunate that I must have got [Hintz] in a bad spot. You don’t want to go out there and hurt anyone. But it was just one of those plays that happens so often.”
Having Hintz unavailable hurt the Stars in Game 3, a 6-1 drubbing by the Oilers that put Dallas in a 2-1 hole in the best-of-7 series. Hintz is the Stars’ second-leading scorer in the postseason, with 11 goals and 15 points through 15 games. He was hopeful when taking warmups Sunday that he’d feel good enough to get back in but a quick discussion with the training staff made it clear he wasn’t ready.
Coach Pete DeBoer has since classified Hintz’s status as day-to-day.
“Of course you want to go every night, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Hintz. “I don’t know how close I [was to playing]. But I have played many years [and I] know when it’s good and when it’s not. I should be good to know that [when] it comes to that decision.”
The Oilers will have some lineup changes of their own to sort through in Game 4. Connor Brown is out after he took a hit from Alexander Petrovic in Game 3; he’ll be replaced by the incoming Viktor Arvidsson. Calvin Pickard — injured in Edmonton’s second-round series against Vegas — will return to back up for Stuart Skinner. And Edmonton continues to wait on defenseman Mattias Ekholm, who is getting closer to coming back from a lower-body injury.
SUNRISE, Fla. — Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin is happy to never get another question about his team’s record-setting NHL playoff losing streak.
“Wonderful. That’s wonderful,” he said after Carolina’s 3-0 win over the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night. “The guys in here worked hard tonight and that’s all you can ask for.”
The Hurricanes avoided a sweep by the Panthers, sending the series back to Raleigh, North Carolina, for Game 5 on Wednesday night. In the process, Carolina snapped a 15-game losing streak in the conference finals — the longest losing streak by a team in a playoff round other than the Stanley Cup Final in NHL history.
The Hurricanes’ last win in the Eastern Conference finals was in Game 7 against the Buffalo Sabres in 2006, a game that saw current Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour score the winning goal.
“It’s been a story. So, yeah, it’s nice to not have to talk about that [anymore],” Brind’Amour said.
When the streak began in 2009, Carolina captain Jordan Staal was helping the Pittsburgh Penguins to a conference finals sweep of the Hurricanes. He said the win over Florida in Game 4 showed how much pride was in the Canes’ locker room, as they refused to allow the Panthers to end their season.
“There’s a lot of guys that didn’t want to go home,” Staal said. “We know we have a huge hill to climb here. We’ve got a great team on the other side that is going to come back with a better effort. It’s a great challenge.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice, whose team had a chance to advance to a third straight Stanley Cup Final with a victory, gave credit to the Hurricanes for a solid and disruptive game while acknowledging that his team could have gotten to its own game better.
“I haven’t been nearly as down on that hockey team as you fine people have been over the last three games, and I won’t be as down on my team tonight,” he said. “[The Hurricanes] were good. They had good sticks. They had good quickness. You see that happen more often when the possessor of the puck’s feet are not moving.”
Three factors changed the vibe for Carolina in Game 4.
Goalie Frederik Andersen had his second shutout of the postseason after being pulled in Game 2 and benched for Game 3. Andersen was 7-2 with a .937 save percentage and a 1.36 goals-against average in nine playoff games before facing Florida. In two games against the Panthers, he gave up nine goals on 36 shots (.750, 5.54). Andersen had given up just 12 goals in his previous nine postseason games.
In Game 4, he was a great last line of defense, stopping all 20 shots.
After the game, Andersen declined to discuss being benched.
“I don’t really want to talk about my feelings. It’s not about that. It’s about the team and trying to put the best lineup on the ice that they feel like gets the job done. So I’m ready for when I’m called upon and glad to be able to play,” he said.
Andersen played a key role in another factor: the Carolina penalty kill. The Panthers were 4-for-5 on the power play in the first two games of the conference finals. The Hurricanes killed off four power plays in each of the past two games.
“Our goalie was great when he needed to be. The penalty kill was phenomenal,” Brind’Amour said. “We gave ourselves a chance, and that’s all we can ask.”
Perhaps most crucially, the Hurricanes scored the first goal. Carolina is now 6-0 when scoring first and 3-5 when it trails first in these playoffs. In the regular season, the Hurricanes were 30-7-2 when scoring first and 17-23-3 when trailing first.
They scored first and then played the type of close, low-scoring game they excel at. As winger Taylor Hall said before Game 4: “We’re thinking about winning the game 1-0. If it’s close, then we’re in a good spot.”
“It’s been a story. So, yeah, it’s nice to not have to talk about that [anymore].”
Rod Brind’Amour on Carolina snapping 15-game losing streak in conference finals
Forward Logan Stankoven opened the scoring at 10:45 of the second period, giving Carolina its first lead of the series. Rookie defenseman Alexander Nikishin made a terrific backhand pass across the neutral zone to spring Stankoven ahead of the Panthers’ defense, and he beat goalie Sergei Bobrovsky for his fifth goal of the playoffs.
Stankoven said he called for the pass from Nikishin, who was playing in his third postseason game.
“The play happened so fast and it was a great feed by him to make that play off the turnover. It all starts with him,” said Stankoven, who was acquired from the Dallas Stars in the Mikko Rantanen deadline trade.
It remained 1-0 until Sebastian Aho and Staal added empty-net goals in the last 2:11 for the 3-0 win.
Slavin said Game 4 was in the Carolina’s comfort zone.
“A thousand percent. It was 1-0 up until the end there. You can’t get any tighter than that,” he said.
With that, the Hurricanes ended their historic losing streak and turned their attention to making more NHL history. Only four teams in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs have rallied to win a best-of-seven series after trailing 3-0, although two have done it in the past 15 years (Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 and Los Angeles Kings in 2014).
“You watched the way we played tonight. Everyone put their heart on the line,” Slavin said. “We know we’ve got a good group in here. We know we’ve got all the pieces. We just have to bring it every night.”
The good news for the Dallas Stars is that if the Western Conference finals get to a Game 7, they have the NHL’s master of Game 7s behind their bench.
The bad news is that they need to get to Game 7 for that to matter. And after going down 2-1 in the series to the Edmonton Oilers via a 6-1 loss in Game 3, another defeat could make that difficult.
Can they punch back in Game 4 to knot the matchup at 2-2 heading back home to Dallas for Game 5?
Here are notes on the matchup from ESPN Research, as well as betting intel from ESPN BET:
Following the Oilers’ win in Game 3, ESPN BET has adjusted the series winner odds to Oilers -375 (previously -140) and Stars +280 (previously +120). The Oilers’ Cup winner odds are now +140, while the Stars’ are +700. Connor McDavid is atop the Conn Smythe odds leaderboard at +175.
The Oilers are now 10-2 in their past 12 games, after losing the first two games of the first round vs. the Los Angeles Kings, and are 20-3 at home in the playoffs since 2017 when leading after two periods.
The Stars lost consecutive games for the first time in the 2025 playoffs, and have one goal total in their past three road games (Games 2 and 5 of the second round against the Winnipeg Jets and Game 3 against Edmonton).
McDavid powered the Oilers to a Game 3 win with his 44th multipoint and sixth multigoal game of his playoff career. McDavid has as many playoff games with multiple points (44) as he does with no points (20) or one point (24).
Teammate Evan Bouchard opened the scoring with his sixth goal this postseason, tying Leon Draisaitl for the team lead. Bouchard is the first defenseman with six goals in consecutive postseasons since Rob Blake in 2001 and 2002. Bouchard also recorded an assist, marking his 24th career multipoint playoff game, which extended his record for defensemen in a four-postseason span.
Stuart Skinner was remarkable in goal once again, stopping 33 of 34 shots to earn his fourth win this postseason. It was his first win of these playoffs that didn’t end in a shutout, as the Stars’ goal with 4:25 left in the second period ended Skinner’s shutout streak at 99 minutes, 33 seconds. With the win, Skinner tied Andy Moog for the third-most playoff wins by a goaltender in Oilers history (23); Bill Ranford is next on the list at 25, and Grant Fuhr is well ahead at No. 1 with 74.
Dallas’ Mikko Rantanen recorded an assist on the goal from Jason Robertson, but has gone without a goal in his past six games. In his previous six games before the drought, he scored nine goals, which remains tied for the NHL lead this postseason.
Jake Oettinger allowed six goals in the loss, tied for the most in a playoff game in his career; the previous occasion was Game 6 of the 2023 Western Conference finals against the Vegas Golden Knights.