Lincoln Riley doing everything he can to make final USC memory a positive one for seniors

USC has not had the season that anyone in the program hoped it would to this point. Instead of playing for an undefeated season or a spot in the Pac-12 Championship game on Saturday against UCLA, the Trojans are fighting to avoid a fifth loss in the past six games.

Still, Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley believes there is plenty to play for and insists his team will be ready to go for this weekend’s rivalry matchup. Riley is making it a priority to send his seniors out on a positive note.

“They’re going to remember this game. Like you remember your last games. You remember your rivalry games. You remember some of those games when you had to really pull in tough, together,  as a football team,” Lincoln Riley said earlier this week. “And so I think making sure that we do everything we can to make this last memory a positive one and to send these guys out on the right note. I mean so many of these guys have been instrumental in this turnaround.”

While this season has been disappointing, USC still appears to be headed in the right direction.

In 2021, before Riley arrived, the Trojans finished 4-8 (3-6). Over the past two seasons, USC is 18-7 (13-6). Riley’s team didn’t meet the lofty expectations it had in the preseason in 2023, but it’s still been a solid past couple of years.

“I mean, I think two years ago, if you’d have asked anybody involved with this program, ‘Hey, we’re going to go through two years. We’re going to be in championship-type games late in the season both years. We’re going to have one year where we’re right there on the doorstep of being in the College Football Playoff,’ from where this thing was, hell, everybody would’ve taken that. Everybody,” Riley said.

“We forget that now, but everybody would’ve taken it. And these guys have been so key to that. And as this thing goes and gets better and better and better, as these years go on, we can’t lose appreciation for these guys here in the beginning that helped push this thing along.”

Riley feels that this is a huge game, even if it’s not for a championship. He wants his seniors to go out on a positive note in their final home game.

“There’s a lot of those guys that are obviously still on this team and a handful that only played last year, but they’ve been so important to this, so critical to this,” Riley said. “We couldn’t have done it without them, and we want to make sure that they see our appreciation in the way that we play and the fan support that we have there during the game, the way that we coach. When you do it here, you put it all on the line. You go for it. This is USC. Anything less than your best is not good enough.”