Everything Lincoln Riley and Caleb Williams said after loss at Notre Dame

SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- Only head coach Lincoln Riley and quarterback Caleb Williams spoke after No. 10-ranked USC's deflating 48-20 loss at No. 21 Notre Dame on Saturday night, and they both emphasized a message of resilience for the Trojans moving forward.

They were also asked repeatedly for explanations on what went so wrong.

Read the full transcript of their comments below:

Join our postgame thread on Trojan Talk and share your thoughts on the loss.

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LINCOLN RILEY TRANSCRIPT:

Opening comments:

"Alright, yeah, incredibly disappointing night. Just didn't, didn't play good enough to win the game here on the road in a rivalry game against a good opponent. I mean, that's the simple matter. The obvious thing is you lose the turnover battle 5-0 and you give up a kickoff return for touchdown, you have a penalty that takes a touchdown off the board, a number of negative plays. That's the name of the game right there. I mean, I think they had -- I haven't seen the final stats -- but I think they had 250, maybe 260 yards of offense. I thought our defense played good enough to win the football game. I thought we stepped up and did a lot of great things there, but we just put our defense in some terrible positions.

"So, yeah, obviously we're really disappointed. It's a disappointed locker room. Disappointed -- certainly not defeated, not demoralized. We know that we've obviously got a lot in front of us, but this game means a lot. We know it means a lot to our fan base, it means a lot to college football and it's certainly disappointing that we weren't able to play nearly good enough football to win tonight.

"I thought the team had great resolve at halftime -- still very much believed at halftime that we were going to win the football game. Came out and got a couple of stops, got the one touchdown in and felt like all the way through up until the kickoff return for touchdown that we were right there. We were starting to get some stops, we were starting to finally kind of move the ball a little bit offensively and get into a rhythm there, and then obviously the kickoff return for a touchdown was the back-breaker there at the end of the game.

"So, I still very much believe in this football team -- 1,000 percent. The good that you see from this football team is good enough to beat anybody, but we obviously know we've got to put it together and put it together quickly to get our best and to get it from all three sides and be able to rise together. And we've got a great opportunity to do it. Listen, I reminded the team and will remind everybody, we're undefeated in this conference right now. We play in right now what I think is the best conference in college football top to bottom and every opportunity that we want is waiting for us, including a big one seven days from now in Los Angeles that we'll be excited to get back and prepare for. So, we'll obviously watch the tape. We've got a lot of corrections and a lot of things that we got to fix and get better at, but can't wait to get back to the Coliseum to go to battle with this team, the guys in this locker room. They're going to get our best in terms of the staff, I know we're going to get their best and we're looking forward to bouncing back and playing very well here next week."

What did tonight reveal to you in the way of existing concerns that were magnified?

"Well, again, you lose the turnover battle so drastically, it's hard to -- it honestly don't matter a whole lot else what you do when you lose the turnover battle 5-0. And to me, having a kickoff return for touchdown is almost like losing it 6-0. I mean, you negate a pretty stout defensive performance, you negate any of the positive plays on the other special teams, the few that we had offensively. So we just kind of consistently played from behind all night. Obviously, I think the big thing offensively is the amount of negative plays, whether turnovers or getting behind the chains. That's obviously showed up for us here tonight and we were consistently playing from behind, and you can't do that against a good defense, a good football team.

"Our good plays are good enough -- our bad plays are really hurting us right now. And typically when you play really well, your good plays are still good enough, but your bad plays don't kill you. We've got to take a big step there offensively, and we've got to do a better job -- we've got to get turnovers, we've got to take care of the football because you're not going to beat anybody good losing the turnover battle like we did tonight."

Why do you think this team hasn't been able to put four quarters together in the past month?