Clay Helton has had his USC football team adopt the mantra of "trying to go 1-0 every week."

But now that the Trojans are one win away from securing a spot in the Pac-12 championship game, he acknowledged it may be more difficult this week not to consider the larger picture.

"I think the reality is everybody knows it," Helton said Thursday morning.

At 4-0 overall and in the conference, the Trojans have the edge on Colorado (4-0, 3-0), which had to play a non-conference game when USC was forced to cancel the teams' meeting two weekends ago due to its COVID-19 situation. The disparity in conference games (and division games) will prove to be the tiebreaker if both win out this week.

Of course, USC still has to take care of business against a surging 3-2 UCLA team that has won three of its last four games with a narrow 3-point loss at Oregon the only blemish in that stretch.

"The last thing I told them last night is to keep the 1-0 mentality that we’ve had each and every week. Being human, you think about scenarios of what next week could look like, what is it going to be and question marks. But the fact of the matter, like I told them after practice, nothing matters other than this Saturday," Helton said. "... So let’s just worry about Saturday. I can’t tell you who we’ll play next week, really, to be honest with you. We just need to worry about having a great opportunity to go to the Rose Bowl, play the game we love in a great crosstown rivalry, and just try to get 1-0 on the week. And that’s what these kids have done.

"They’ve poured themselves into each and every week. We’ve got to keep the discipline of doing that again. Naturally, human nature does take over a little bit. But you have to try to fight it out and say, I know the importance of this game, I know the significance for our season, but our job at the end of the day is to go 1-0 on the week."

Helton was given the opportunity to gloat a little bit Thursday and declined.

For a coach who has spent the last couple seasons entrenched on the hot seat -- especially last year as USC's recruiting dipped to the worst in the Pac-12 and many expected a new athletic director would mean a total reset for the program -- Helton was asked if he feels he's proven the program is headed back in the right direction with the team off to its 4-0 start while also having a top-10 recruiting class entering the early signing period next week.

"I'll leave that up to y'all. That's y'all's job. My job is to win football games and raise kids, so I'm gonna concern myself with my job. But y'all do a pretty good job of that, so I'll let y'all do it," he said.

That said, he did talk about this year of change for the program, enduring the COVID situation and all its disruptions

"I think you're only as good as the people that surround you and I'm very thankful for our staff and our players," Helton said. "Like I told them, I'll never forget walking out of this building March 15 with it just being the unknown of what's going to happen next, and not knowing we wouldn't be back in the building until July 6. And stepping in July 6 and being so happy just to walk in the building. And then the unknown of what a season's going to look like and kids just training and preparing, not knowing what the future [holds] -- were we going to play in the fall, were we going to play in the winter or spring, or were we not gonna play? And just have the mental toughness and the discipline to show up to work every day in preparation for a mission and a goal of winning a championship. And so to see that group of men do that on the day-to-day basis and be at kind of the top of the mountain right now and a very important game, yeah, it makes you proud.

"It makes you proud of the guys that surround you and thankful for a Todd Orlando and a Graham Harrell and a Sean Snyder as coordinators that are doing an amazing job offensively, defensively and special teams-wise. It makes you thankful for our senior leadership and our veteran leadership to truly have our culture, which is a toughness, a discipline and a unity to get through some adverse times in 2020 and here we sit with the chance to accomplish a goal. So, am I thankful to them? Yes. Am I proud for them? Yes. Am I extremely thankful to be associated with each and every one of them? Without question. So it's going to be one of those seasons, hopefully we accomplish our goals, it will be one when you're 80 years old, you'll look back and say, man, I'll never forget that group of men and what they meant to us and to our university that year and the toughness and discipline that they had."

USC has gotten some good news on the injury front the last couple days as right guard Liam Jimmons (elbow) appears on track to play after coming out of the game early Sunday, and starting linebacker Ralen Goforth is on track to return to the lineup after missing the Washington State game.

"Liam Jimmons is looking good. He’s actually practiced the last two days and doesn’t seem to have been as significant as we thought. He’s sore, but doing well," Helton said.

Helton noted that backup cornerback Dorian Hewett is in the concussion protocol and not expected to play.

He also said the Trojans should have the rest of their COVID quarantiners back in action. USC was without starting left guard Andrew Vorhees and backup linemen Justin Dedich and Liam Douglass last weekend.

"With hopefully good results from this morning’s testing, we’ll be able to have all of our members of our team back that were quarantined due to positive tests or quarantined due to contact tracing," Helton said.

Among the many, many ways this is a strange and unique season is that the NCAA is not counting this year toward any player's eligibility, meaning seniors can choose to return next year if they want.

"We’ll have some exit interviews. It’s a different situation. We’ve still got another game, all of us, the entire conference will be playing next week, not only the championship, but all the other teams. It’s really, everyone’s last game is next week. We are going to honor our seniors, but we’re also going to visit with them to see what their future is," Helton said. "Obviously in this time, they do have the opportunity to go back. There’s NFL evaluation discussions that we’ll have. A lot of our kids are graduating -- will they move on to the real, working world? Or do they want another experience? Obviously all of our seniors that want to come back, I’ll take each and every one of them. I don’t think I’ll get them all. I think some of them are heading to play on Sundays. But it is a little bit different."

After USC let go of linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator Johnny Nansen in the purge of the defensive staff last December, UCLA hired the longtime Trojans assistant as its defensive line coach.

Helton spent six years together with Nansen at USC and was asked about now having him on the other side of this rivalry game.

"Johnny is a tremendous coach and a friend. He’s a tremendous recruiter also. When Chip brought him on, I thought what a great take," Helton said. "Johnny has a coordinator mentality, is a terrific position coach, and obviously is on the other side of the ball, so he knows our offense. He’s seen it firsthand. But we’re an execution-based offense. We do what we do and we try to master the schemes we master. We don’t try to reinvent the wheel for another team. But obviously Johnny is doing a good job over there with their defense. We’ve seen significant strides from last year to this year on their production. You look at 18 sacks, 39 tackles for loss. They’re living in the backfield and doing a nice job of keeping people between the sticks, which will be a big part of this game. So credit them hiring a good coach, credit Johnny for what he’s doing defensively."

Helton had more praise for UCLA in general, noting that the Bruins aren't far away from potentially being undefeated.

They lost their opener 48-42 to Colorado (albeit they were down 13 with less than 2 minutes left) and then had that 38-35 loss at Oregon, while otherwise winning impressively -- 34-10 over Cal, 27-10 over Arizona and 28-18 over Arizona State last weekend.

"They’re sitting at 3-2 right now and really playing good football. If you look early in the season, they had some turnover issues. Think they’re -6 total right now. As we look at the tape, you see a really talented football team that kind of shot themselves in the foot with turnovers. They could easily be undefeated right now," Helton said. "You look at the Colorado game, and you look at the Oregon game, and both were significant turnovers that led to points. The Oregon game, we know the pick-six right before half, I thought was a significant play. As well as the Colorado game, there were two turnovers inside the 10 yard line going in. That was the difference in the game. If not for those, maybe they’re sitting here in our position, looking for one win to try to win the South.

"Chip [Kelly] is obviously a brilliant offensive mind. He always has been. Everyone sees him as a spread guy, a tempo guy, but he’s really one of the better run game coaches there are in college football. You look at 8 out of the last 13 games, they’ve rushed for 200 yards or more. He really tries to stay ahead of the sticks, not having negative yardage plays, and does a good job with that. With the guys he has in the backfield, with DTR [QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson] and [RB Demetric] Felton, as well as [RB] Brittain [Brown], he’s got a talented backfield that he’s doing a lot of good things with again this year."

There are no students on campus, so rivalry week feels a little different this year.

But Helton said the Victory Bell will be out at practice Thursday, and there are still some reminders that its not just an average game week.

"They’re having an honorary Trojan Knights function that I’m going over to see. We’re actually bringing the Victory Bell out to practice today, to go through the history of it with our younger players who are just coming on board. To try and make it as traditional as we can," he said. "This is a different year. I thank the university for everything they’re doing to try and make it as good as possible. It’ll be neat to see the Trojan Knights today. I’ll be at Tommy Trojan today thanking them. I look forward to ringing the bell on the practice field with our team and educating the younger players on the significance of this game."