Remember when USC’s 2021 game at California in Berkeley had to be rescheduled and moved back to December? That game started after 8 p.m. local time in Berkeley, all while the conference championship games were ending on other networks. USC was a forgotten team, pushed into an irrelevant game at the end of a nowhere season in an after-hours time slot. We all remember the misery of that game … but also the fact that with Lincoln Riley coming aboard, hope had arrived.
One thing about that Cal game: Riley and his assistant coaches credit that schedule adjustment (due to COVID-19) with giving the USC program a kick-start.
(h/t Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports)
Riley is jumping in, visor-first, knowing USC hasn’t been this bad, record-wise, in 30 years. he said a key to the roster flip was being able to watch practice for a couple of days in December before the season-ending game with Cal.
“To watch the guys actually practice and work as opposed to studying tape, that kick-started the whole thing. That was huge,” he said.
Grinch put it another way: “In some ways it was, ‘Why is that guy standing on the sidelines? Why isn’t he playing? Is he hurt?’ You got a little bit of a sense of mindset of some of the guys. Commitment level of some of the guys.”
Life works in mysterious ways.
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