On Saturday evening, the USC football team fell 41-27 to Oregon at the Coliseum. With the loss, the Trojans dropped to 4-1 on the season and 1-1 in Big Ten play.
Following the game, USC head coach Lincoln Riley spoke to the media. Here are some of the highlights of what he had to say:
On the loss
“First I want to say that I hope Dante [Moore] is okay. You never want to see that with any opponent, no matter how competitive the game is. These are all people at the end of the day on both sides, so I wish him speedy recovery. It was a heavyweight battle out there like we anticipated it would be. It was one hell of a game. It came down to a couple plays, like games against two really good teams typically come down to, and we made a few too many errors in the end.
Especially when we got momentum there in the fourth quarter, and then gave them some more opportunities. They did a good job capitalizing on them. It’s a disappointing locker room. Guys fought their hearts out, but obviously we’ve got to take this the right way, and that’s going to be important for the locker room. We have a damn good football team in there. I know we do, and our locker room believes that. We’ve got to take advantage of some of these opportunities. This opportunity to learn and grow. This is a lot of times how you get measured, especially in modern day college football with these leagues the way they are and the level of competition every single week.”
On USC’s defense
“We gave up some big plays. I thought the screen pass there at the beginning of the half was really a big momentum play. We got them in a second and long, and then obviously the penalty there at the end when we had some momentum, and the crowd was into it. That moment was probably the most rowdy I’ve heard our crowd since I’ve been here. It was a hell of an atmosphere in the Coliseum. We had all the momentum in the world, but you can’t do that against good teams and good offenses with talented skilled players like the ones they had. I didn’t think we did a great job tackling them on the night. We missed some tackles that created some of the explosive plays as well, so we have to play better and we have to play tighter. Again, it’s some of those clutch downs. We had the great goal line stop at the end of half, which I knew you could just tell how big that was, and I think gave us a kind of shot of momentum going at half. But some of the opportunities to get off the field we have to be better there.”
On linebacker Desman Stephens II’s response to the hit on Oregon quarterback Dante Moore
“I did not see it.”
On why Stephens remained on the sideline in the second half
“Because he’s on our football team.”
On Oregon backup quarterback Dylan Raiola
“I think anytime a different quarterback goes in it’s going to change the flow of the game a little bit. The guys’ skill sets are different. They’re obviously both proven and good quarterbacks at this level that have experience.”
On the decision to go for it on fourth down in the fourth quarter
“You’re playing to win at that point. We obviously look at analytics, even the one a little bit before that when we kicked the field goal to make it a seven point game was pretty close. We went with the points there. This one honestly wasn’t that close in terms of analytics. It was a pretty strong recommendation to go for it, and I felt very strongly about it as well. You have to try to extend the game. We’re going to need to stop there one way or another. With the number of possessions left and the amount of time left, we felt like it was the right thing. We had what we wanted. We just didn’t make the play.”
On the big picture for this team
“I don’t make big picture statements after a game. We just finished the game an hour ago. We need to capitalize, and we need to stay focused on us, in this moment right now, in this game. This is not about any of the games before. It’s not about any of the games coming up. That’s just a fantasy world. That’s not what we live in. We have some things we have to correct, and we need to play better on the key downs.”
On moving forward
“We have another big one [against Washington], probably going to be a ranked matchup, back here again next week, and we have to be ready to roll. There’s no time to hold our heads. We have to learn from it. We have to grow and get ready to get ready to attack the next one.”
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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lincoln Riley discusses USC’s 41-27 home loss to Oregon
