A couple days after USC's thrilling 17-14 win at Oregon State, coach Lincoln Riley reflected on the key moments and key takeaways from that game during his weekly appearance on Trojans Live on Monday night.

Riley talked about the value of seeing his team work through adversity early in the season, the impact of the crowd noise at Reser Stadium, what he told Caleb Williams on the sidelines as he was struggling, the work of defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, the 'Neilon Nudge' and preparing for an Arizona State team and program that is in flux with an interim head coach.

Read the full transcript of his comments here:

On the way the team stuck together through adversity on Saturday ...

"Oh, 100 percent, it was a challenging atmosphere. I said after the game I gave the Oregon State fans and everyone there in Corvallis a lot of respect. The atmosphere was phenomenal. It was a really tight football game, turned into a defensive slugfest and we had to hang in there because there was definitely some frustrations on not being able to separate and offensively not playing the way we would expect to. To see the defense play the way we would expect our defense to play here at 'SC was awesome. Really just everybody, offense, defense, special teams, whether it's guys that were playing a lot of snaps or guys that weren't, the positivity and the energy and the guys supporting each other never left through the entire game. It was important because you get in those environments it feels like it's you against 1,000. You kind of have, it feels that everybody who is with you is right there on that sideline and you're outnumbered and really have to band together in those moments. And the team did. A lot of teams don't find a way to pull that one out, and we did. Our togetherness and willingness to fight through was a reason why."

What's the benefit of winning a game like that early in the season and what do you learn?

"That we can win different ways and you have to be able to do that. We've said it a couple times on this show already, these games aren't all going to go like the first few go. There's always some like this. You look back at past history, go look at previous championship teams, whether it's a national championship team or conference championship teams, you always look back and everybody thinks, 'Oh, this is this great team,' and when you go back and look, I remember we did a deal a few years ago, I think it was when Clemson won their first or their second national championship, but we went back and watched and showed our team because they actually should have got beat by NC State -- NC State missed a chip shot field goal to win the game -- and they had another one early, I want to say maybe Syracuse and it was really, really close and should have lost, could have gone either way and was fortunate it went their way, and then they go and win the national championship. Just to say that if you're going to try to win them all and you're going to try to be a championship team that you're not going to win the same way every week. I think the confidence to do that, that we were able to go do it, was important."

Did that feel like uncharted territory as a head coach being in a low-scoring game that late?

"We've [haven't] had as many like that but we've had a few. I certainly had to, as a play-caller, I certainly had to keep my patience as well. I think all of our patience got tested, and I think offensively we were all, me first and foremost, but all of us guilty of maybe losing our patience at times and trying to make too much happen. So yeah, as you're calling plays you're trying to get that done, but as a team you've got to have a feel for how these things are going and you could feel that both teams were struggling to score points and move the ball, both defenses were playing well and I think the fact that we held in there, didn't turn the ball over, had some patience, I felt like we would bust through at some point. I hoped it would come a little quicker than it did. I really did, Oregon State's a good defense and they gave us some problems, but we also created some problems ourselves. I thought we were going to get over it, and yeah, what patience we had did pay off in the end."

How did you feel about the run defense?

"Oh, without a doubt, we did a good job limiting the explosive runs. We had a lot of very minimal gains, so I thought our gap control [was] much better in this game. It was the best, it can get better, but it was certainly the best of this season up to this point. The only real negative -- I say only, but we've got some things we've got to do better -- but we missed too many TFLs. We had guys wrapped up behind the line of scrimmage multiple times, and the four turnovers were huge but we didn't feel we did a good enough job in the TFL and the sack game because that's something obviously we take a lot of pride in. Some of those that were second-and-9 or second-and-8 easily could have been second-and-13 or second-and-14. We were right there, so we've got to finish some of those plays in the backfield."