Lincoln Riley Apr 23, 2022; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Southern California Trojans coach Lincoln Riley during the spring game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Since the inception and popularization of the NCAA transfer portal, there might not be a coach in the country that has been more successful at building his team with the transfer portal than USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley.

It’s safe to say that Lincoln Riley has learned a lot about the transfer portal throughout his career. And this week, he opened up a little bit about what he’s learned.

“The first thing I learned is you can take a lot of guys and coaches from a lot of different backgrounds, maybe people who have not had that much experience together, and you can come together and be a pretty darn good team quickly,” Riley said according to On3. “That took a lot of hard work. There was a lot of very — that was a special combination of people, to be able to get those results, and to come together as that team did in that fashion, and that short of time. So I definitely don’t take that for granted, and we’ve made that a big part of, as we have started to evaluate transfer guys after that, this group we brought in this year.

“We did not want to miss on that. Like, we didn’t want to take for granted that this just happens, because it doesn’t.”

We’ll have to see if Riley can continue to have success with the transfer portal in the coming years.

[On3]