Carroll Perseveres to Preserve Class

Somewhere in the early hours of Wednesday morning, in the last gasp of a long recruiting process, Pete Carroll burst into an office where several of his assistants were huddled.

The USC coach had heard that three of his top high school prospects appeared headed in the same direction--elsewhere. The Trojans had been pursuing the two best running backs in the state, Lorenzo Booker and Hershel Dennis, and faced the possibility of losing both. Offensive lineman Winston Justice was reportedly leaning toward UCLA.

An agitated Carroll looked at his staff and said: “Isn’t this fun?”

In the following hours, through a flurry of last-minute phone calls and a mostly sleepless night for Carroll, USC went from disappointment to celebration by landing a group of recruits ranked in the top 10 by several national recruiting publications.

The Trojans addressed their sagging ground game by winning over Dennis and Justice, both from Long Beach Poly High, as well as Kyle Williams, a tackle from Dallas, and Brandon Hancock, a massive fullback from Fresno.

The defense got two other Poly standouts, defensive back Darnell Bing and defensive lineman Manuel Wright, and Justin Wyatt, a highly rated defensive back from Compton Dominguez.

“A remarkable effort,” said Allen Wallace, publisher of SuperPrep magazine, who ranked the recruits at No. 8 in the nation. “USC was on the precipice of losing the most significant parts of this class but the staff basically made it happen.”

The Trojans did it with their coach’s trademark optimism and energy. On Tuesday night, amid reports that Dennis had decided on Oregon, Carroll and assistant Kennedy Pola called the Poly running back to make one more pitch. It got Dennis thinking.

“I just had a good feeling about what they were telling me,” he said.

The way the system works, players can change their minds until they fax a letter of intent to their chosen school. Coaches work the phones until the last minute, talking to players, their parents, aunts and uncles, anyone who will listen.

So USC continued to call on Dennis, Justice and Booker, who was reportedly headed for Notre Dame. Carroll ended up sleeping on the couch in his office.

He didn’t sleep long. The fax machine started up at 4 a.m. Wednesday with an early letter of intent from Mike Williams, a 6-foot-5 receiver from Tampa. Later came a commitment from Justice.

“They didn’t promise anything to me,” the 305-pound tackle said. “And I kind of liked that.”

It didn’t hurt that his Poly teammate was working on him.

“Me and Winston were arguing,” Wright said. “He was talking about UCLA and I was talking about USC.”

There was still the matter of Booker and Dennis. As the day wore on, USC coaches became convinced they would not get Booker. Carroll called Dennis again and subtly told him as much.

To that point, Carroll had not overtly mentioned one prospect to the other. Still, he suspected two high-caliber backs would not commit to the same school. “Anyone who expected us to get Hershel Dennis and Lorenzo Booker in the same year was not thinking clearly,” he said.

Maybe it helped that Booker was headed elsewhere--he eventually committed to Florida State. By 11 a.m., Dennis committed and the Trojans had two of their three jewels. “We ended the day with a whoop and a holler,” Carroll said.

In addition to addressing the running game, USC might have found a punter, Tom Malone of Lake Elsinore, to replace the graduating Mike MacGillivray. The secondary, which lost three starters, could get help from Mike Ross, a St. Petersburg, Fla., recruit, and Ronald Nunn, a transfer from San Francisco City College. And 245-pound Oscar Lua, from Indio, is expected to push for playing time at linebacker.

The celebrations come with disclaimers, however. The Trojans remain thin at cornerback. And among the four Poly prospects, only Justice has qualified academically.

Wright and Bing recently retook the SAT and await their scores. Dennis will take the test in March.

Still, Wallace believes the Trojans took a step in the right direction by attracting so many highly regarded prospects.

“When you’re trying to recruit national-caliber athletes to a program that has fallen on hard times, it’s difficult,” he said. “This team was really on the hot seat.”

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Staff writer Ben Bolch contributed to this report.