For all the stumbles and struggles along the way that forced the Trojans to three overtimes Saturday night against Arizona, USC coach Lincoln Riley and his players were all smiles after closing out a 43-41 win to remain undefeated at 6-0.
Watch the postgame press conference with Riley, quarterback Caleb Williams and rush end Jamil Muhammad here and scroll down for a complete transcript of Riley's comments.
Full transcript of Lincoln Riley's postgame comments:
Opening comments ...
"What a college football game. I give Arizona a lot of credit. I'm not going to make a lot of excuses in any way -- they played well, played a lot better than us certainly sometimes in the game. Anytime you go down 17-0, you've got a mountain to climb there. We certainly had a lot of moments where we didn't play very well, certainly in the beginning of the game, but our team's fight and resolve to get back and find a way to win that with some of just the craziness that happened in this game, I'm really proud of. A lot of teams don't win this game. You go down 17-0 and you don't recover. You have kind of the sequence there at the end of the game and you don't refocus back up and get the job done and win it in overtime. We had multiple opportunities where I think if our culture, our guys wasn't strong enough then I think we would have folded and we'd be sitting in here without a smile on our face right now. So it feels good to be 6-0, a lot to correct, a lot of new battles getting ready to come up and I'm proud of this team for finding a way to win this one."
Can you tell us about that play call in triple overtime?
"Yeah, we've been working it. I'm glad we had confidence to get it done. It something that gave Caleb a chance to run it or throw it. I actually think he would have thrown it -- we had two receivers that tripped each other up, which was a little unfortunate. It might have been a little less dramatic, but guys executed it in the end and that's what you practice for those moments for. I told you guys throughout the offseason we've really spent a lot of time on situational ball. To get that stop, to stop a couple of their two-point plays, that was the game there in the end. Again, proud of our guys for getting it done."
What was the plan at the end of regulation with the field goal?
"Yeah, we were getting ready to run it and we just had obviously a missed exchange. It was close there whether you go ahead and score. We had conversations about, should we just take a knee? Because you could tell that they were getting ready to maybe let us score. The clock was so low, though, that it is a unique conversation on do you kick the field goal because something can happen, right? Like what did happen. Or do you go ahead and try to score. So, those are conversations that we were having. Obviously, unfortunate that we mishandled that exchange there -- that didn't go to plan -- but I had the timeout there the entire time so it wasn't ideal but we weren't really concerned because we knew we could use the timeout."
What do you think was the reason for the slow start?
"It wasn't anything very good. We didn't coach very good, we didn't execute very good, we had some opportunities that we missed out, kind of all took our turns -- I mean, offensively and defensively, really. Just kind of took turns across the board. Give them credit. They executed at a high level on both sides. The play that I thought really turned the game in a lot of ways was Covington's interception. I mean, I think we just had the fumble and that momentum flipped back like that. Our defense, I thought, as they really stiffened up there in the second quarter, that's what allowed us to get back in. I mean, that energized the entire team, entire sideline. But yeah, obviously, you don't want to put yourself in that hole, but when you're in it, man, you can either feel sorry for yourself or you can dig yourself out and we dug."
What was your approach to game-planning for Noah Fifita?
"We didn't know which quarterback was going to play, so we prepared for both. I thought he played about like he did against Washington last week -- pretty good. The guy's got some poise, he's got some playmakers. I thought he threw it to us a couple of times and they just went up and made a couple of tremendous individual plays, but the kid has got some poise and got some moxie. He's an impressive player for a young guy."
How do you assess the defense and where you're at at the midway point of the season?
"I thought we took some great steps. Again, when you go down 17-0, you get tested right there internally. Do the guys, do you really believe, are guys ready to really fight. As Jamil said, and I said before, your culture gets tested quick, and the defense is what got us going, the defense is what won this football game. It got us going in the beginning down 17-0 and closed it against a play they had been running well all night. Closed it with a huge TFL to win the game. So, proud of those guys. We're going to get better, missed a lot of pieces tonight even as the game went on and some guys got in there and responded. So we'll keep growing and proud of their fight tonight."
Caleb Williams chimes in on that question: "We wouldn't have won that game without defense. We were down 17-0, so this, this whole defensive thing, our brothers, the score wouldn't be 43-41 without them. So put it simply that way."
Is there any concern about the slow start tonight or not scoring in the fourth quarter last week -- what do you attribute not having an identity at times to?
"I don't know, I think it might be the No. 1 offense in the country right now, so ... Listen, my expectations are higher than anybody's. Like, I want to score every frickin time we have the ball. In reality, that's not going to happen. You can either panic or you can get back on it. We didn't play our best tonight by any stretch, but one game to another, I wouldn't count us out just yet."
