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Donte Williams discusses USC interim coach opportunity, expectations

USC interim coach Donte Williams on the practice field Tuesday.
USC interim coach Donte Williams on the practice field Tuesday. (Ryan Young/TrojanSports.com)

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Donte Williams was still getting used to some facets of his new job Tuesday as USC interim head coach, spending a significant portion of practice watching the Trojans offense.

"Usually I was worried about my particular position group," Williams said. "Now, I'm worried about the team, right? No matter what, if it was one-on-ones or the team periods, I was always rooting for my guys -- that's the way it should be, it's competitive. Now to come out here and cheer on the offense when they make a big-time play, that's a little different. That's something I've never experienced. I've never got so happy when a receiver caught a ball and a quarterback made a perfect throw. That happened today."

Williams, who has served as USC's cornerbacks coach since last season (adding the title of associate head coach last winter), was informed Monday afternoon -- shortly before the team -- that head coach Clay Helton was being let go and he was being elevated to interim coach.

Tuesday was Williams' second day leading the Trojans on the practice field as they prepare for a road game at Washington State this Saturday.

And he doesn't plan to simply be a figurehead in the position. No, in Williams' first comments about the change in leadership while speaking on the Trojans Live radio show Monday night, he stated that he wanted to clean up the "dumb mistakes" that plagued the Trojans in their 42-28 loss to Stanford on Saturday night (and many other times throughout Helton's tenure.)

On Tuesday he was asked how he plans to achieve that.

"To be honest, just making sure that we touch on every little thing. We pay attention to all the little details. And that's what we're focused on right now," he said. "The coaches, I see right now a guy makes the littlest mistake the coaches make sure they get on them. Whether that's taking a guy out for a play, whether that's taking a guy out for a quarter, whether that's taking a guy out for a game, we're going to make sure that we clean up every little thing that we see."

USC was penalized 9 times for 111 yards in that loss to Stanford, which served as the final straw in the evaluation of Helton. In his statement Monday announcing that Helton would be dismissed, Bohn boldly said that he believed Williams "gives us a higher probability for success the remainder of the season."

Bohn spoke to reporters after practice Tuesday and expounded on the decision to turn things over to Williams with 10 games remaining on the schedule.

"Well, Donte, if you get to know him, he's from Los Angeles and Donte is a relationship guy. And I really believe that our talented coordinators need to coordinate and do a great job so they can focus on the important roles that they have. And Donte's recruited a great number of these players, and some of the players that he recruited from other institutions where he was and came to USC. So he knows them, he knows their families, he has great relationships with them, he has impeccable poise. He's a leader," Bohn said.

"And we wanted our coordinators to coordinate and do a great job and we really wanted to ensure that our special teams coordinator too can lock in on that so we are fundamentally prepared and sound for good solid football while Donte's doing everything he can to rally the team and pull them together."

Williams said he "altered a couple of things" in the practice routine Tuesday, but it wasn't anything overtly evident to those watching practice.

Wide receiver Drake London was asked what he felt had been different so far under Williams.

"Just a little more competition is what I would say. We’ve only had one practice with him so far so can’t really get into all the details of that," he said.

Said veteran safety Isaiah Pola-Mao: "He’s a real genuine guy. He’ll tell you how it is -- he’s not going to sugarcoat nothing, he’s going to really tell you how it is. If you’re doing bad, you’re doing bad, he’s going to make you step up, make you want to do good."

If Williams can deliver some added accountability to the Trojans, then he will indeed have made a mark.

In the meantime, he spent a little time working with the cornerbacks Tuesday but largely stood watching, bouncing between both practice fields early and then spending a large stretch watching the offense vs. the scout team defense.

"I was out here watching the offense a lot more than the defense. I pretty much have a great handle on what the defense is doing. Right now, I'd be lying to you saying I know everything. I pretty much want to know exactly what the offense is doing from a verbiage standpoint," Williams said. "It's one thing to play against our offense, it's another thing to truly know their verbiage. So I'm learning as I go from our offensive coaches, and they're doing a great job of teaching me.

"Really, that's the biggest thing -- the verbiage, personnel. Just seeing how we conduct our day-to-day operations because I never truly got a chance to see the way they conduct their operations, I've been so much with the defense. So just to see how Indy's ran, to see what they're doing period by period, and those guys today looked great to me, they looked phenomenal. And the energy was really, really high on offense, and they [were] moving around and that's what I expect."

Williams will move down from the coaches booth to the field for the first time in his season-plus with the Trojans. USC announced that defensive quality control analyst Michael Hutchings had been promoted to linebackers coach to fill the vacant on-field coaching spot created by Williams replacing Helton as head coach, and he'll move up to the booth.

The cornerbacks spent a portion of practice working with defensive graduate assistant Aaron Williams, meanwhile.

As for Donte Williams' new role and the time invested with the offense, he was asked what input he might have on that side of the ball on game days.

"It's input pretty much for the whole team. That's the responsibility that they [bestowed] on me, and like I said, these coaches and these players have full confidence in me just like I have confidence in them. So we're going to work hand in hand in this,' he said. "It's not the Donte Williams show. It's the USC show, so we're working this all together. It's no I or me, it's us and we. That's what the whole message is, it's us and we -- what we're going to do. Not what I'm going to do -- what we're going to do."

There is a lot of intrigue as to what the Trojans are going to do coming out of this early-season coaching transition.

Bohn reiterated that his expectation is for USC to still compete for a Pac-12 championship. That's part of why the change was made now, to provide a spark to the team and hopefully address some of the issues that led to the Stanford debacle.

"We still have very, very high expectations for this team, as they do as well. We’re going to do everything we can to help them be successful with 10 [games left] -- hopefully a great bowl game as well at the end of the season," Bohn said. "Regardless of what opportunity that is, we still control our own destiny. The players understand that, this coaching staff understands that."

Neither Bohn nor Williams cared to speak to whether or not the interim head coach would be considered a candidate in the national coaching search to fill the position on a long-term basis.

(According to a source, USC plans to go through a thorough national coaching search regardless of the record on the field the rest of the season.)

"We haven't got into that, but our search is wide open. Our search is wide open. That's what a national search is all about," Bohn said.

Said Williams: "Like I say, I'm worried about today. I have full faith in USC that they'll make the best decision, make the right choice for these athletes, for these student-athletes. I have full-fledged trust that they will do that, so I'm about going 1-0 today."

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