Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES – The first sack of his career, USC’s Kameryn Fountain smiled Wednesday night, meant a lot. He repeated it. A lot.

But he remembered none of it, really.

“I’m not gon’ lie,” Fountain said Wednesday, “at the moment, it just, it just snapped, so.”

Freshman nerves, perhaps, had long washed away any recollection of that third-quarter play against Rutgers Friday night, Fountain getting tossed into the fire for the most action of his USC career. But it was plenty memorable, a tiny glimpse into the ideal future for USC’s defensive front. The 6-foot-6, 265-pound Fountain had entered USC’s program “really, really raw,” as defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn put it – only to perfectly sniff out a Scarlet Knights play-action off the edge.

He waited, in a grapple with Rutgers left tackle Hollin Pierce. He watched quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis tuck the football. And Fountain ripped his hands through Pierce’s for a step that left his sparring partner spun around, helpless as Fountain dove with fellow defensive end Sam Greene to stuff Kaliakmanis.

USC’s defensive linemen entered Friday night with just 2.5 sacks total on the year. Suddenly, they had another, with mountain-of-a-young-man Fountain. A quarter later, they had one more, from redshirt-freshman counterpart Greene.

For seven games, Lynn had often been forced to mix together quarterback pressure from scratch, firing off a variety of secondary and weakside-linebacker blitzes to poke holes in opposing pockets. But USC found something in a more traditional four-man rush Friday, amid a defensive-end group that’s been depleted by the season-ending loss of Anthony Lucas.

Greene and Fountain – Sam and Kam – rolling together off the edge.

“They brought,” Lynn said Wednesday, “a little juice.”

Lynn has had to make it work, in year one as USC’s defensive coordinator, with “what he had,” as head coach Lincoln Riley put it last Thursday. And what he had, as Riley barely disguised, was a lack of proven pass-rush talent.

“I think his creativity has shown,” Riley said of Lynn, when asked about that creativity in the pass-rush, “and obviously that’s going to continue to evolve as we continue to recruit, as we continue to develop, to target guys that obviously fit this system and give us the skillsets that we want to have with the way that we play.”

A young wave already exists on USC’s roster, largely marinating a season away from real reps. True-freshman defensive tackle Carlon Jones, a 2024 four-star out of Texas, has been hurt for much of the year. Fellow freshman Ratumana Bulabalavu, a late flip before the 2024 class’s final National Signing Day, has yet to see the field. Fountain and Greene, though, were tossed in the fire Friday night, Greene in particular seizing his snaps after saying Lucas had been in his ear.

“Just telling me to go get paid – it’s my time, just go earn what I feel like I deserve,” Greene said. “If I want it, this is the time to go get it.”

Greene was actually credited by Pro Football Focus with two sacks against the Scarlet Knights. Fountain (49, meanwhile, finished second on the defense in quarterback pressures. And Lynn made clear Wednesday that both would get their fair share of snaps down the stretch of USC’s season, a program trying to stack a steadier pass-rush heading into 2025.

“Just from a development standpoint, there’s a handful of those kids that are going to be a big part of the team next year,” Lynn said, of developing youth on USC’s pass-rush. “Some of them could be starters.”

“So the more playing time they can get now, the more they can get those mistakes out now, the better.”

ocregister.com

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