Lincoln Riley said Thursday after practice that Bryson Allen-Williams, who has been on staff as a graduate assistant, will coach the linebackers in preparation for USC's Las Vegas Bowl matchup with Texas A&M later this month.

USC lost linebackers coach Matt Entz last week when he was hired as Fresno State's head coach.

Riley spoke highly of Allen-Williams, known around the program as "Coach BAW." He starred at South Carolina and had a brief stint in the NFL before getting into coaching with opportunities at Georgia State and North Carolina before joining USC as a grad assistant in the summer of 2023.

“He's taken over the backers, been a seamless transition. He was very heavily involved with our backers even before Coach Entz got the Fresno job and departed. So that's been seamless. Our guys have been excited about it. I know they'll play really hard for him," Riley said.

Riley was asked if Allen-Williams is under consideration for the full-time job ...

“He is. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he's a great young coach. He's going to be tremendous. His value here from day one has skyrocketed," Riley said. "I mean, he's a humble young guy. He's got great connections. He's been an active recruiter for us. He's going to be a tremendous coach. So whether this is his time here, it's somewhere else, I mean, you never know with him, but he's one of those guys you look at and say, hey, he's going to make it in this business. He's going to be a star in this business because of his work ethic, how invested he is in the players. You can tell his players really feel that. And that was why there was no hesitation to elevate him once the change was made.”

Riley said on the search for a LBs coach overall that USC is "hustling it but we're not in a hurry."

"We have a little bit of time here leading up into our prep, obviously. So we've had a chance to work on it. Not surprisingly, we've got a pretty fun candidate list I think has a chance to really come make a great impact," he said. "So it's starting to be able to have some of those more in-depth interviews and visits with guys, and I think it helps us maybe even some this year after being a year in this defense, a year with coach [D'Anton] Lynn, seeing the rest of the staff that we have around it, I think it probably gives you a better idea as opposed to kind putting it together from scratch like we did last year of, all right, here's the other skill sets in the room -- how can we find the best and most complementary piece?

"So it's been exciting to kind of take a deep dive into that and obviously is striving to find the best person for it.”