TEMPE, Arizona -- USC's first road test was just that -- a challenging evening for the Trojans both through self-inflicted mistakes and an aggressive Arizona State team keeping the pressure on all night.

USC ultimately pulled away for a 42-28 win to move to 4-0, but after the game there were questions about the defensive performance -- especially the tackling struggles -- a slew of penalties and operational mishaps, whether coach Lincoln Riley should have leaned more on a successful rushing attack and what this performance meant in the big picture.

"The season is just a climb. You tell people all the time this whole road deal and what it's about. I mean, look at Florida State the other day, and there's example every year all the time. It was just simply a new challenge, and I think what we'll take from it is there's a lot of really positive things we did to come out here and win despite a lot of those mistakes, and there's a lot of those mistakes that I think we'll take a lot from and be better ahead," Riley said. "That's the season, right? You're never going to be like this, this, this, this, this (raising hand higher each time) like every single performance. How are you going to go and top being up 49-3 at half the previous week? That's not reality.

"The challenges continue to change, and then you either respond and keep going together as a team and getting better and winning along the way or you don't. We won, we did a lot of good things, we've got a lot to get better at and we've got to get ready for another tough road game next week."

See the full postgame press conference and a complete transcript of Riley's comments here:

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Opening comments ...

"Tough road win for us tonight. Road wins are really, really difficult. That's college football. You see it all across. When you play at programs like USC, you're going to see a different atmosphere, inspired football team. Give coach Dillingham a lot of credit with all the injuries and adversity they've had, they obviously came out and did a lot of really good things, challenged us in a lot of ways. So give him and their program a lot of credit. Tough losses like they had the week before aren't easy to come back from, and they certainly did that, so a lot of respect for those guys.

"Yeah, I think it was, for the first three quarters it was kind of an example of how the road games can challenge you. It was an example how mistakes tend to show up on the road a little bit different than they do at home. And we obviously made some critical mistakes that kept that a pretty close game at half. I mean, a lot of the numbers were drastically different, but obviously the missed exchange there that led to a touchdown, the kind of whatever you want to call it, the fake punt that was, I don't really know how to describe that, but it found its way into one of their receivers hands. Those were two huge possessions, I think, where we really had a chance to separate in the first half and there were some uncharacteristic mistakes by us. Didn't play very good offensively in the red zone, but I thought we stepped up in a tough environment there at the very end and played our best ball in the fourth quarter, which that's what you've got to do.

"Certainly wasn't our cleanest performance. We know we're going to have to get a lot better. We know there's a lot of things to learn from, and I think this team will do so and look forward to our next road challenge."

With the penalties and operational mistakes, do you attribute those more to preparation or the road atmosphere?

"Both. I mean, you know, you get on the road and everything's just magnified a little bit. We were just a little tick off, especially offensively in terms of moving, play clock got down on us a lot and we did not handle that well, so we'll have to do a better job preparing the guys for that. Yeah, we had a couple untimely penalties defensively that really put them out of some of the holes that we were putting them in because we were getting so many negative plays. We've got to be better there. Listen, the road is challenging, there's a reason why 70 percent of the time the home team wins in college football and it's been like that forever and ever. So we know we're going to have to get better it with many more road challenges ahead."

With the way MarShawn Lloyd was running, was there a thought to getting him more involved?

"Yeah, we rode him pretty hard. Didn't run the other guys quite as much. Yeah, he got dinged up there for a minute and came back, but we rode him pretty hard. We ended up hitting some big plays in the pass game that shortened some of those drives there in the end. But yeah, as good as he was running, you could argue that we probably should have gave it to him more."

Do you come out of this with any specific concerns defensively, and what do you attribute the tackling to?

"Yeah, that was the biggest, the tackling was the biggest disappointment. We had a lot of negative plays. We were on the night pretty clean on the run game in terms of like gap assignment, but we did not tackle them well. And we knew the back coming in was a tough runner. He's a good runner, he runs out of a lot of tackles. I saw lot of shoulders, a lot of guys kind of launching at guys trying for big hits and fundamentally wasn't where we needed to be. So that will be a big focus point. But is it correctable? For sure. We tackled well three of the four and we need to get back at it here this week."

What do you attribute the penalties issues to?

"Shitty coaching."

Does this feel like the team took a step back in its development?

"No, I mean, the season is just a climb. You tell people all the time this whole road deal and what it's about. I mean, look at Florida State the other day, and there's example every year all the time. It was just simply a new challenge, and I think what we'll take from it is there's a lot of really positive things we did to come out here and win despite a lot of those mistakes, and there's a lot of those mistakes that I think we'll take a lot from and be better ahead. That's the season, right? You're never going to be like this, this, this, this, this (raising hand higher each time) like every single performance. How are you going to go and top being up 49-3 at half the previous week. That's not reality. The challenges continue to change, and then you either respond and keep going together as a team and getting better and winning along the way or you don't. We won, we did a lot of good things, we've got a lot to get better at and we've got to get ready for another tough road game next week."

How much did playcalling change with Kenny Dillingham as the play-caller?

"A little bit. It definitely did. I mean, Kenny's an experienced play-caller. Listen, you could tell very quickly that I said it through the week, even if you have injuries at the quarterback position, if you know who you're going to play with and you've got a full week with good coaches, you're going to have a better plan than all of a sudden if you lose two guys at the first of the game. Even a bad offensive coach is going to have a better plan, and Kenny's a tremendous offensive coach, so we knew we were going to see a different atmosphere, a different team, a different challenge. We weren't surprised by that, and they did a good job with it and they threw a little bit of everything at us and some of it we handled well and some of it we need to handle better."