USC is holding football camps on campus all month, starting today. So we asked, what should Trojan fans expect to happen this month? I revive the season’s three thoughts column for the offseason just for this occasion.
1. USC will hold some of the most talent-laden camps on the West Coast, but it isn’t the Rising Stars Camp of old.
A few factors have hurt the quality of USC summer camps since the end of the Pete Carroll era. First, while Carroll would never even approach 100 scholarship offers in a class, today’s USC football coaches will approach 200 offers. Nearly every 2019 prospect in the Southern California area worth offering a scholarship to has been offered a scholarship. That means many top rising seniors aren’t yearning to camp with USC because the scholarship has already been offered. Many of those players will attend a camp to watch.
On top of that, this year, summer official visits have thrown a wrench into things. While we published a very impressive confirmed campers list (and many other big names we didn’t get will be on campus), USC is also hosting official visitors later this month. In the past, USC’s camp would have featured numerous players from all across the country who were highly ranked by Rivals.com. Now, many players who may have been tempted to camp at USC in the past are taking June official visits instead. After all, official visit are paid for.
So expect to see out-of-state superstars like Devontae Dobbs, George Karlaftis, Theo Wease, Stacey Wilkins and Erick Young on campus this month. Maybe some of those names will surprise and show up to camp at USC as well. But if they don’t, I cast my vote to go back to the old official visit format. I would like to see Dobbs and Wilkins try to handle Karlaftis on Howard Jones field. I would like to see if Erick Young could shut down Theo Wease on the same field that Adoree’ Jackson and JuJu Smith-Schuster used to battle on as well.
Call me old school, that’s fine. Oh well. It should be fun anyway.
2. USC will land some commitments and half the message board won’t be happy
USC’s coaches are going to be looking for new options in the 2019 class and scholarship offers are going to be made. A few of those prospects are going to jump on those offers, without question.
Get ready because those commits are going to be the type of commits USC fans love to debate over.
As I touched on previously, most of the name prospects in 2019 class have already been offered by USC. And those top end players are usually waiting a bit before announcing a commitment. So, USC is likely going to add commitments from a few three-stars this summer. That might not wet the appetite of to many USC fans, as the 2019 class only features one four-star out of seven commits thus far.
But remember USC’s camp season in 2017? The Trojans extended 18 scholarship offers in a 72-hour period last June. Not many of the rising seniors offered were considered superstars.
Liam Douglass picked up a scholarship offer from USC during that time and committed. While he ended up as a four-star recruit, he didn’t even have a Rivals.com profile when USC extended the offer. Michael Ezeike was another 2018 prospect to pick up a scholarship at this camp. He ended up as a four-star recruit but was a fall through option for USC in case Devon Williams went to Oregon. Three-star linebacker Matthew Tago picked up an offer from USC during a camp and ended up losing contact with USC and going to Oregon State. Like Tago, three-star Halid Djibril picked up a scholarship offer from USC around this time before falling out of contact with USC and going to Washington State. Jeremiah Martin ended up as a four-star but he’s someone USC cooled on near the end of the process as well. What about John Jackson? He picked up a scholarship offer from USC at a summer camp and ended up walking on for the Trojans.
That’s not an impressive list in hindsight but history repeats itself. We expect much of the same after these camps.
Here’s our best guess on 2019 prospects who could pick up an offer. CB Paul Edwards, RB George Holani, DL Siale Liku, ATH Tarik Luckett, RB Taron Madison and DB Cameron Stephens. It’s unlikely that it’s all of them but there’s a good chance someone from that list gets offered.
3. Camp season is really about underclassmen
USC will offer some name football recruits at this camp but most of them will be underclassmen. Of the 18 camp scholarships offered last year, 11 of them went to underclassmen. Those players that got offered were CB Jeremiah Criddell, LB Justin Flowe, WR Kyle Ford, QB Aaron McLaughlin, WR Braedin Huffman-Dixon, RB Kendall Milton, ATH Jordan Patterson, TE Ethan Rae, TE Jude Wolfe, DL Stephon Wright and QB Bryce Young. Nearly all of those players remain targets for USC today. The same really couldn’t be said about many of the seven 2018 offers USC made at that camp. One of those players ended up in USC’s class and only one other one could be argued to be a USC target late in February of 2018.
With that being said, here’s a few underclassmen without USC offers who scheduled to camp and worth knowing. We’d bet a few of these players will pick up scholarship offers:
2020 three-star offensive tackle Reece Atteberry is scheduled to cap at USC June 12.
2020 four-star wide receiver Gary Bryant is scheduled to camp at USC in June.
2020 RB Marshawn Buchanan will camp with USC June 10.
2021 wide receiver Beau Collins is scheduled to camp with USC June 10
2020 four-star tailback JoJuan Collins also plans to be at USC twice this month.
2021 CB Jaylin Davies is scheduled to camp with USC June 10.
2020 three-star tight end Seth Fig ins will camp at USC June 21
2020 three-star quarterback Shane Illingwoth will camp at USC June 10
2020 three-star offensive tackle and Cal commit Everett Johnson is scheduled to camp with USC June 10.
2020 OT Jalen Jeffers is scheduled to camp at USC this month.
2020 Quarterback JD Johnson will camp at USC June 10.
2020 four-star Nathaniel Jones will camp at USC on June 10, 12 and 21.
2020 guard Matt Merrit will camp with USC June 10.
Two-star 2020 BYU linebacker commit Dahlin Mesake is scheduled for sometime this month.
2020 three-star guard Drake Metcalf ids scheduled to camp at USC June 10 and 12.
2020 three-star guard Dirk Nelson will camp at USC June 10
2020 three-star guard Noah Nelson will camp at USC June 10.
2020 ATH Trey Paster is scheduled to camp at USC today and tomorrow.
2020 four-star cornerback Clark Phillips will camp at USC on June 12.
2020 tight end Mark Redman is scheduled to camp with USC this month.
2020 OLB Malik Reed is scheduled to camp with USC June 10.
2020 three-star ATH Mike Robertson is scheduled to camp at USC in June.
2020 cornerback Isaiah Young is scheduled to camp at USC June 10.
If we had to bet on which underclassmen will get offered this month, we would go with: Reece Atteberry, Nathanial Jones, Drake Metcalf and Clark Phillips.
