As No. 10-ranked USC prepares to travel to South Bend, Indiana, and No. 21 Notre Dame, coach Lincoln Riley was asked Thursday if he'd ever been to Notre Dame Stadium before.

"No, I haven't been there. Watching 'Rudy' is probably the closest thing, which I've seen probably 5,000 times, so watching that is probably the closest experience that I've had so looking forward to that for sure," Riley said.

On a more important note, Riley indicated that freshman receiver/return specialist Zachariah Branch's status is still in question for the game Saturday night.

Branch, who has two receiving touchdowns, a punt return touchdown and a kick return touchdown, has missed the last two games with an undisclosed injury.

"Progressing. Still hasn’t been a full participant yet. I do think he’s making progress. We’ll kind of watch and see," Riley said. "He’s going to need to continue to make some jumps here to be ready for us. So hopefully he can continue to progress over the next few days. He’s in a better place than he was last week, but he’s not able to do everything yet. He’s eager. But we obviously want to be smart and turn him loose at the right time."

During his weekly Zoom call with reporters Thursday, Riley also talked about rush end Jamil Muhammad's emergence, the linebacker rotation, the challenges Notre Dame presents, USC's third-down offense, the offensive line and more.

Here's a full transcript of his comments ...

To what extent did you know what you were getting with Jamil Muhammad in the portal and has he exceeded expectations?

"Yeah, he was an interesting study, obviously his history playing quarterback and some other positions coming up. The film from last year, you could see some of the explosion and talent that was there and you could also tell he was still a little raw. We like the natural talent and the arc that he was on in terms of his trajectory. That was I think the key thing that got us interested in the beginning and once we got to know him and you got to see how smart he is, articulate, very hard worker, very driven, we felt like he really fit and so yeah, he’s been obviously tremendous. He’s also really emerged as a leader. He’s been very vocal, he’s really taken a leading role in kind of the locker room, our team, our defense, which has been very welcome. I think he’s really established himself has a key figure on this team."