Lincoln Riley assesses how Duce Robinson was able to balance football with baseball

USC Trojans wide receiver Duce Robinson is going to be a key figure on the offensive side of the ball for head coach Lincoln Riley. That’s despite his need to balance time between football and baseball.

As Riley explained during Fall Camp, he thinks that Robinson handled that balance well and that as time goes on they’ll be able to continue to keep up that balance with what they’ve learned from this first year.

“I thought he handled it pretty well,” Lincoln Riley said. There were definitely some challenges just built in this year just being the first year and obviously baseball’s had to move around a little bit with their stadium under construction. But I thought the baseball coaches, Coach Stank [Andy Stankiewicz] and all those guys, did a great job. Strength coaches did a great job.”

Duce Robinson went to USC as a five-star recruit in the Class of 2023 and was the 23rd overall recruit in that class, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. He also came in with plans to play baseball, which can create challenges as he balances multiple sports and school.

“We learned a lot like you always do. We took the experiences of Kyler [Murray] and the other guys that we’ve had do it before and we were able to have a plan, but then you’ve also got to learn each individual guy. Their body and what’s their workload in football, what’s their workload in baseball going to be like. Typically, that first year in baseball — Duce didn’t do a whole lot his senior year baseball-wise,” Riley said.

“So, it takes a little bit getting back into it. I think it got better as the year went on. I know his baseball got better as the year went on. He was able to do a little bit early in the summer before we came back here and then he’s been full go from a football standpoint.”

As a baseball player at USC, Duce Robinson played in four games and got two starts. He had a batting average of .167 with a .333 slugging percentage.

“So, it’s been good getting him settled back in on the field and I think all of us have a bunch of notes and experiences now directly with him that we’ll use this time around next year.”

Duce Robinson says USC’s receiver room is ‘absolutely loaded’

One strength of USC’s going into the 2024 season appears to be the team wide receiver room, which Duce Robinson recently described as being loaded.

“Obviously, our receiver room is absolutely loaded,” Robinson said.

“I think we’ve got an immense amount of talent in there. Coach Riley obviously is one of the best offensive minds in college football. So he’s gonna find ways to be able to use all of us to our strengths. He’s gonna come up with creative ways to get all of us the ball in the ways that play to our strengths. So I’m super excited to see what we can end up doing together. I think we have a great group who can do some really special things.”