MESQUITE, Nev. -- Malachi Nelson is the top-ranked quarterback in the 2023 recruiting class and the Los Alamitos HS standout has been USC's top priority in that cycle for quite a while now.

None of that has changed.

But some of the dynamics in his Trojans recruitment have indeed changed recently, with USC offering fellow local 2023 quarterback Nico Iamaleava (Warren HS) a couple weeks ago.

Essentially, the issue is that the USC staff had told Nelson and his family they wouldn't offer another quarterback in the 2023 class, and the change in position on that front along with how it was handled has not landed well with Nelson and his family.

From USC's perspective, nothing has changed at all in regard to Nelson being the clear No. 1 priority at the position -- and that has been reiterated to him since the other offer went out -- but after going all in on Bryce Young in the 2020 class and not pursuing fellow top local QB D.J. Uiagalelei only to have Young flip to Alabama late in the cycle, Uiagalelei lock in early with Clemson and the Trojans end up with no QB signee, the program wanted to avoid a similar outcome.

That's the background, and the matter has become a major talking point in USC recruiting circles in regard to what it now means for the Trojans' pursuit of Nelson.

So we went straight to the source for an in-depth interview on the matter with the five-star standout, who was competing at the Pylon 7-on-7 tournament in Nevada this weekend.

"I think the biggest thing was for me, it wasn't that they offered him -- it was that they had told my parents something, they told them they weren't going to offer [another QB], offered him and it's like, from my parents' perspective, it's like 'We're done with them. You can't lie to us.' I think that was the biggest thing that went down," Nelson said Sunday, while wearing a USC shirt. "I didn't want anybody to think I was scared of competition or anything like that. I hope nobody thinks that, but it is what it is.