Lincoln Riley reveals season-ending injury for Solomon Tuliaupupu

USC defensive lineman Solomon Tuliaupupu had surgery to address a lower-leg injury and will miss the 2023 season, head coach Lincoln Riley said on Tuesday. Riley is hopeful to have the defender back for 2024.

Tuliaupupu saw his first game action for USC in 2022 as a fifth-year player, as injuries hampered much of his career prior to that point. Prior to his injury this year, Tuliaupupu was trending toward playing a role on the defense for USC, Riley said.

“Yeah, we got confirmation. He just had a procedure to repair a lower-leg injury. He’ll end up missing the season for us. Obviously we’re real disappointed. He was having a great camp, had a great spring. But still going to have a great chance to have him back with us against next fall,” Riley said.

In his career, Tuliaupupu appeared in 14 games and has 10 total tackles, making the most of them with 2.5 sacks.

As a true freshman in 2018, Tuliaupupu redshirted while recovering from a foot surgery that slowed him into the spring. He didn’t play in 2019 either, and was granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA because of it. Ahead of the 2020 season, he suffered a knee injury and missed the season after summer surgery. He had been recovering from that knee surgery still when the 2021 season came about and he did not see the field.

So, even after missing this season with an injury and potentially entering a sixth year of college in 2024, Tuliaupupu could still have multiple years of eligibility to use.

And given how much he’s come back from so far, Riley won’t be shocked to see the defender rise from the ashes again.

“And knowing him and what he’s fought back from, it would be no surprise to us all to see him do it. So he got that repaired today and we’ll see him back out here soon,” Riley said.

Riley is excited about his 2023 USC squad

Compared to last year’s team, the Trojan’s head coach can already tell a difference between the two.

Riley contrasted last year’s squad, which went 11-3, to this fall group in an episode of ‘Trojans Live’ on Tuesday. He said they’re already in a different spot than last fall because they’re kicking off their year a week earlier during Week 0.

“Camp was a lot of fun. It’s been very unique with the Week 0 game, right? That changes a lot in our world,” Riley said. “I mean, literally, 75% of camp was done with our guys still in class, which was a little unique. We’ve got our first day of game week here and also our first day of class at the same time. The calendars and body clocks are a little bit different there.”