Lucas is among defensive players with `a lot to prove'
LOS ANGELES >> Trojans linebacker Eric Gentry will never forget the number 116, because it has been weaponized around USC, a painful trigger pressed over and over and over again as a reminder of the season that was lost.
It comes after every defensive workout, one additional set of repetitions, as Gentry described after USC's final spring practice on Thursday. One more rep for every rung USC dropped in totaldefense rankings in 2023. 116 reps. 116th in yards-pergame allowed. A cardinalred stain on the back of the returning Trojans' jerseys, the reminder glistening in every drop of sweat.
“If you don't feel like you got (something) to prove here,” Gentry said Thursday, “you shouldn't be here, really.”
Not exactly a novel idea, the notion that the holdovers on this USC defense would be motivated by the mess that was 2023, the midseason demise of coordinator Alex Grinch and any sort of championship hopes quickly derailed. But many of those individuals don't just have something to prove — they have no choice but to prove it, time ticking on next-level hopes and collegiate dreams as their stocks have dropped.
And few have more left to prove than Anthony Lucas.
The former five-star defensive lineman came to USC via the transfer portal in January 2023, seeking a fresh start and a clean slate, after a quiet freshman season that ended in embarrassment at Texas A&M: a suspension due to a locker room incident after a loss. He left an immediate impression, as it was impossible to overlook his 6-foot-5, 295-pound frame; he started off the edge in USC's first game of the fall against San Jose State, recording 37 snaps.
By their final regular-season game against UCLA, Lucas
earned all of two snaps. He finished the season with seven tackles, nine pressures and not a single sack.
“I mean, it wasn't really good,” Lucas said Thursday, when asked how he would assess his performance last season. “So I mean, I gotta get back to the drawing board and get back to it.”
What were specific things he identified to work on? “Everything.”
It was perfectly simple. Lucas is generally a man of few words with reporters. It was also everything that needed to be said. And instead of continuing to fade in USC's defensive line plans under new coach Eric Henderson's
regime, Lucas has been one of the most hotlybuzzed names of spring camp, bulked up and making an instant impact on coaches and teammates alike.
“He's much more consistent,” head coach Lincoln Riley said Tuesday. “It's not just like a flash play here and there. I think he's one of the guys that have really taken to the new scheme, the new style up front — it's really fit what he needed to become as a player . ... I think he's growing up, and I think the scheme and the coaching fit have been very positive for him.”
It was readily easily to forget that despite his imposing build, that Lucas was still a fairly inexperienced sophomore last season, which defensive ends coach Shaun Nua pointed to as the reason for his struggles last season. After slimming to 265 pounds as part of USC's defense last year, Lucas is back up to 275, a weight he said Thursday has allowed him to move faster and with more confidence.
“I think Ant, especially, is becoming more focused, even more,” Gentry said. “He didn't have a lot of opportunities that he felt — to display himself last year, or the snap count fell off. So he feel like he got a lot to prove.”