Eric Gentry is earning high marks with Alex Grinch, USC defensive coaching staff
Korey Foreman and Romello Height not getting on the practice field? Yes, that’s bad. However, Tuli Tuipulotu is a star. Mekhi Blackmon looks great in the secondary. There are some positive stories on this USC defense.
The most positive story of all could be the development of Eric Gentry.
The transfer from Arizona State brought a lot of hope to USC. If he can reach his ceiling, the Trojans stand to benefit a lot. The more precise hope was that Gentry could evolve quickly, so that the Trojans would have a starter-level player for the early-season Pac-12 games on the schedule. Gentry’s familiarity with the Pac-12 and its opponents — such as Stanford (Week 2) and Oregon State (Week 4) — made him a uniquely valuable piece to the puzzle for USC. That Oregon State game in late September is such a central moment for this 2022 team.
Guess what? Gentry is drawing a lot of praise from Alex Grinch. It’s such a big boost for the Trojans.
247Sports gathered Grinch’s comments about Gentry:
Another player getting universal acclaim is transfer linebacker Eric Gentry.
“I’m very impressed with Eric. You could tell he’s played football at our level. The difference between a freshman and sophomore…there is no greater difference. And then sometimes we will minimize that as coaches and expect these high level high school guys to come in here and beat grown men. There’s a huge difference between 18 and 19. So you see that and I give him a lot of credit. He didn’t have the spring with us. Summer is good. We can do some things and max out the time that way but coming out here and picking up as well as he has in a short period of time has been a real bright spot for us.”
Gentry made this list below:
List
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