California Dreaming: USC cleaning up in its home state

RELATED: Predictions on top West Coast prospects

USC has dominated in-state recruiting in the Rivals.com era, virtually picking and choosing the California-based players it wants.

Things could get even better this recruiting cycle.

For only the second time in Rivals.com history dating back to 2003, the Trojans have a legitimate chance at signing the top five players in California.

There were plenty of folks who wanted USC coach Clay Helton canned after a 1-3 start last season. The Trojans then won their final nine games, including an epic Rose Bowl win. They capped that with the sixth-best recruiting class, top on the list of teams without a five-star signee.

“The Rose Bowl win has a lot to do with it,” Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell said. “When you’re talking about something Pete Carroll was able to do only once, you have to give Helton a lot of credit.”

Let’s break down the list: The top-rated prospect in the state is five-star receiver Jalen Hall, who played with USC signees Joseph Lewis and Greg Johnson last season at Los Angeles Hawkins and will play at Long Beach (Calif.) Poly this season with five-star USC quarterback commit Matt Corral. There’s a fantastic chance Hall follows suit and signs with the Trojans.

Corral, who played at Westlake Village (Calif.) Oaks Christian as a junior, is second in the state and has been committed to the Trojans for months, although Georgia and Alabama seem like serious competition in his recruitment.

Five-star receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who has absolutely dominated at every event this offseason and is pushing to be the top receiver in the 2018 class and the top recruit in the state, is serious about USC. His brothers play at Stanford and Notre Dame. Michigan, Ohio State and others are also involved, but it seems as if the Trojans have the edge at this point.

“USC still looks good,” St. Brown said at a recent 7-on-7 event.

Fourth and fifth in the state are four-star cornerback Isaac Taylor-Stuart and four-star linebacker Solomon Tuliaupupu.

While both seem more like wild cards, Taylor-Stuart has talked highly of the Trojans throughout his recruitment and Tuliaupupu, who will play his senior year at Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei, has also been high on USC although both have many other national offers.

Taylor-Stuart and Tuliaupupu might be hardest to judge, though, since they’re both legitimately looking all across the country and have taken plenty of visits. Alabama, Ohio State and many others are involved with them both.

Of course, this could all fall apart as well.

But for the first time in a while, USC is coming off a Rose Bowl victory, the Trojans have a Heisman frontrunner at quarterback in Sam Darnold and a spot in the College Football Playoff is a serious possibility.

The only time USC signed the top five players in the state during the Rivals.com era – actually top six – was in 2006 when the Trojans landed Allen Bradford, Stafon Johnson, C.J. Gable, Jamere Holland, Shareece Wright and Joshua Tatum. USC had gone 37-2 the previous three seasons before signing that class. By contrast, USC has had at least three regular-season losses in each of the past five years.

Helton, defying many odds, could get that done again after a disastrous run of coaches with Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian.

“It speaks to the fact that nobody liked the hire of Helton,” Farrell said. “It was another interim hire. You had so many ups and downs at that position after Carroll left. You had Kiffin, an interim coach, then Sarkisian fired and an interim coach. They wanted a sexier hire. They wanted a big-time guy.

“USC is the kind of place where they felt they could pick and choose from the Power Five programs or lure an NFL guy. The fact that they were “settling” made everybody upset. People thought they could do better than Kiffin and people thought they could do better than Sarkisian. Helton is a victim of their previous hires.

“Did I think he’d turn it around? No. Did I think he’d be in position to land the top five players in the state? No. A lot of people felt like that last year because the body language of the team was just awful.”

Not anymore. And the state’s best players have noticed.