{"id":96750,"date":"2025-12-16T13:45:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T13:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/96750\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T13:45:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T13:45:24","slug":"lincoln-riley-confirms-who-will-be-playing-for-usc-in-alamo-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/96750\/","title":{"rendered":"Lincoln Riley confirms who will be playing for USC in Alamo Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Following Monday afternoon\u2019s practice at Howard Jones Field, USC coach Lincoln Riley<\/a> addressed the media for the first time since the Trojans\u2019 victory over crosstown rival UCLA<\/a> on Nov. 29.<\/p>\n

USC<\/a> (9-3), ranked No. 16 in the AP poll, is preparing to play Texas Christian (9-4) on Dec. 30 in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. USC finished 7-2 in its second season in the Big Ten and won four of its last five games, the only setback during that stretch being a 42-27 loss to Oregon, which is the No. 5 seed in the College Football Playoff. <\/p>\n

Riley announced that safety Kamari Ramsey<\/a>, receivers Makai Lemon<\/a> and Ja\u2019Kobi Lane<\/a>, tight end Lake McRee<\/a> and linebacker Eric Gentry<\/a> will not play in the Alamo Bowl. Lane declared for the NFL draft on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnthony Lucas<\/a> and Bishop Fitzgerald<\/a> want to play in the game but are dealing with injuries and trying to get back … we\u2019ll see how that goes,\u201d Riley said. \u201cKilian O\u2019Connor<\/a> and Elijah Paige<\/a> and Jahkeem Stewart<\/a> all had surgery and will be ready to roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about signing the No. 1 recruiting class for 2026<\/a>, Riley said: \u201cIt was a great day. We tried to keep the focus on building next year\u2019s team. The amount of guys that we signed is a big portion of it and as we start to look ahead … half of our day and maybe even more is pointing towards next year and coming years. Meanwhile, obviously getting ready for this bowl game. It was a lot of hard work to add talent and people who care about this place and starting to put next year\u2019s team together has been exciting here these last few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley has a 35-27 record in his four seasons at USC and is hoping to improve his bowl record to 3-1. He guided the Trojans to wins in the 2023 Holiday Bowl and 2024 Las Vegas Bowl.<\/p>\n

Riley watched the CIF state Open Division bowl game between Santa Margarita (coached by former Trojans quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer) and De La Salle on Saturday and was impressed by the performance of USC commit Trent Mosley, who had 11 catches for 183 yards and two touchdowns and a rushing touchdown in the Eagles\u2019 47-13 win.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was someone we targeted very early on,\u201d Riley said. \u201cI thought he was super impressive and it was important. He\u2019s one of the best receivers in the country. He\u2019s proven that and he just played out of his mind. It\u2019s a great family and he\u2019s a really smart kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what advice he gives to players who are deciding what to do next in their careers, Riley said: \u201cYes, it\u2019s an important decision. The guys that make the right decision no matter what it is get a leg up on the rest of their lives. Consequently, a wrong decision can be catastrophic. That\u2019s the world we all live in. I just try to educate them on their options. I don\u2019t like telling guys you should do this or you shouldn\u2019t do that. It\u2019s more about, here\u2019s this option, this is what it would look like, here\u2019s what you need to consider. Sometimes the decision\u2019s pretty clear one way or another, other times it\u2019s not. I try to give them as much guidance as I possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that USC will be missing quite a few players who were key contributors throughout the season, Riley is not ruling out the possibility of younger players seeing action against TCU.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s gonna be guys all over the place who are going to have opportunities,\u201d Riley said. \u201cAll sides of the ball, all position groups, maybe it\u2019s some of the guys you saw a little bit during the season and in some instances you\u2019ll see guys get some burn in this game that haven\u2019t played at all or very little. Bowl games are great, but days like this are the most valuable part of it because we\u2019re just pouring reps into all of these guys, it\u2019s super competitive and the energy level is just different. All these guys feel it\u2019s their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley admitted he and his staff had to make hard decisions based on the incoming freshmen, a majority of whom are spring enrollees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s huge, it\u2019s a high, high number that are going to be here and it\u2019s important,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had to make a bunch of roster decisions in the last couple of weeks. We have a large number of players who have already signed and some of the decisions we had to make were based on knowing what we have coming in, and when you sign as many as we did, you\u2019re going to have tough decisions to make.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following Monday afternoon\u2019s practice at Howard Jones Field, USC coach Lincoln Riley addressed the media for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48181,6848,423,53035,6135,48,52,51,13020,32698,47,50,49,19929,5682,18158,9442,47941,427,23138,3533],"class_list":{"0":"post-96750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-alamo-bowl","9":"tag-decision","10":"tag-game","11":"tag-great-day","12":"tag-guy","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-la-headlines","15":"tag-la-news","16":"tag-lane","17":"tag-lincoln-riley","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-monday-afternoon","22":"tag-next-year","23":"tag-no","24":"tag-player","25":"tag-second-season","26":"tag-team","27":"tag-trojans","28":"tag-usc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}