ARLINGTON, Texas -- USC defensive coordinator Alex Grinch talked with reporters for 20 minutes Thursday at his official pre-Cotton Bowl press conference, but few of the questions pertained to the Jan. 2 matchup with Tulane.

For the bulk of the session, Grinch assessed USC's defensive performance in his first season with the program, how he has gone about evaluating the unit and more.

As always, he was unflinchingly blunt and candid in his critique.

First and foremost, he was asked simply what he felt was accomplished on the defensive side in Year 1 with this new staff, looking back over these first 13 months together.

"I think the answer that jumps right off: Not enough. You're charged with having a championship-level defense at USC. You sign up for that. We played good-enough defense 11 times. We didn't play good-enough defense two times. But I don't take a lot of solace in that. We are expected to have a championship-level defense, and we weren't able to do that in the '22 season," Grinch said.

He then added that "I may talk for the next half hour on this," and while his assessment and self-evaluation was broken up by questions steering the conversation, he nearly did.