USC lands commitment from kicker Michael Lantz out of the NCAA transfer portal
USC added another commitment via the transfer portal this spring as kicker Michael Lantz becomes the newest Trojan.
The 5-foot-11, 180-pound Lantz began his career at Minnesota, then moved on to Georgia Southern and will now finish his career with the Trojans. In 2023, Lantz connected on all 45 of his extra-point attempts and went 23-for-28 on field goals. He went 17-for-18 from inside 40 yards, 6-for-9 from between 40 and 49 yards and missed his only attempt from beyond 50 yards.
He also handled kickoffs for the Eagles, forcing 43 touchbacks on 61 kickoffs. Georgia Southern’s touchback rate ranked No. 22 nationally last season. That’s an area of concern for USC head coach Lincoln Riley as he said last season the Trojans needed to force more touchbacks. In 2023, the Trojans responded with touchback rate of 29%, good for No. 110 nationally.
Riley spoke this spring about needing to create competition at kicker, where Denis Lynch was just 9-for-17 on field goals between 30 and 39 yards over the past two seasons.
“There’s two ways that happens,” Riley said of finding improvement. “The guys in your program have got to improve, which we believe our guys will. And then you’ve got to bring in guys from the outside that are ready to dive in and compete. And so we’ve added some guys — wouldn’t rule out that we might continue to explore that. We’ll just kind of see how this spring goes. We’re splitting up the reps. We’re letting these guys compete. We’re gonna have a different holder this year, which obviously is a big factor on the field gold team. That’s been one of our big offseason goals is knowing that one way or another, we have to take a step up there. And everybody involved understands the expectations there.”
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