Lincoln Riley talks "disappointing" loss to Golden Gophers but praises O-line

Following the USC football team's 24-17 loss to Minnesota on Saturday night, head coach Lincoln Riley addressed the media. Here's a look at what he had to say.

"Obviously, a disappointing ending to the game." he said, "It was a hard-fought game. We knew this would be, knew we'd be coming into a motivated team, a really good atmosphere and that we were going to need to play really good football. And the reality is we did a lot of good things on all sides, but we just didn't play good enough to win at the end of the day. We put ourselves in great position there at the end of the game, didn't get it done.

"Give credit to Minnesota. Those guys played well, played hard. It was a really close game and obviously came down to just inches right there at the end. We've had a couple of those. That's the frustrating thing for our team right now -- we're two plays away from probably being 5-0, but those plays happened and we've had opportunities to win those games. We've put ourselves in those positions, which is hard to do on the road against quality teams, but obviously we're frustrated that we haven't finished them off and we've got to close the gap, play a little bit better on any of the three sides, which we're going to hold all three sides accountable. Coaches, everybody, we need to be a little bit better because we've got the makings of a really good team."

Riley was asked about the fact that his team went from being up 17-10 to losing 24-17 and if there were any decisions during that time that he'd like to have back.

"Uhh, not off the top of my head right now," he said. "We got down to the third-and-medium -- obviously the play Miller got hit and the interception was a big play. And obviously had a chance to stop them, had multiple chances to stop them on the last drive, didn't get it done. Had a phenomenal goal-line stand. I'm sure you guys will ask me about that -- I don't really have a vantage point on if it was or if he had the ball. You know, I'll trust that the review hopefully made the right decision there."

Next, Riley fielded a question about the play of his offensive line and specifically his tackles. His answer might surprise you.

"Well, we averaged 7 yards a carry," he said, "and honestly I would say, I felt like offensively, it's kind of strange looking at the scoreboard, but I thought our guys played a really good game up front. We gave up a couple pressures at untimely moments, but no, we took some steps. I mean, that was what number, whatever defense in the country. They're a good defense. We knew that they were. We controlled the ball a lot. We ran the ball extremely well. We just didn't make enough plays to win."

Things took a tense turn next when USC's Jamil Muhammad got a question about whether he felt like the final Minnesota TD actually crossed the goal line. Riley stepped in and got onto the reporter for that question.

"Don't ask him that," Riley said. "Don't ask him that. Next question. Who cares what he says on that? [You] want a player's opinion? Let's ask a more professional question."

The next question was about all of the self-inflicted mistakes that have cost USC in recent weeks. Riley was asked about how to fix that issue.

"Yeah, I don't know if there's necessarily a theme," Riley said. "It's been all parties involved. Just the tough ones for us has been, just like the first half of Wisconsin, I think all three of our turnovers tonight were in plus territory where we had good drives going. And again, those are times, especially when you've got a kicker like we do, man, those are points every single time you feel like when you get over there. And we typically expect to score a bunch of touchdowns there as well. Three drives ended in plus territory in a game like this where there weren't many possessions, I mean, it was massive."

For the third game in a row, USC started slow, especially on offense. Riley was asked how to correct that issue.

"Yeah, I don't know," he said. "We were 7-0 after the deal the other day, so I mean, what we define as a start I know we can call it all what we want. We had a good drive there to start the game. Yeah, we want to get off to a good start, but at the end of the day, like I tell you guys, we've got to keep playing, and still, this team every time we've gotten off to a slow start we've come back and taken the lead late in the game every single time.

"So we talked about it a lot with the guys, we've emphasized it like crazy. That's one of the several things that we've got to keep getting better at, and I'm confident that we will, but we're still putting ourselves in position to win these games and we need to make the one more play to push ourselves over the hump."

Again, Riley fielded a question about the offensive line. He said that he is confident in the personnel that he has at that position group.

"Yeah, absolutely," he said. "We moved the ball at will tonight. Again, you can't have those turnovers down there. To run the ball like we did, we protected the quarterback well for a large, large part of the night. We got good enough play out of the O-line to win."

Finally, Riley was asked about how his team can regroup ahead of next week's game against Penn State. He sounded as if he was ready to play the game immediately.

"Shoot, we're ready to go," he said. "We're ready to go start preparing right now. So we're going to prepare like crazy, have a great week of practice, Coliseum is going to be rocking, we're going to be excited as hell to play. That's what we do."