Speaking after practice Tuesday, USC coach Lincoln Riley reflected back on the last time in his career he went through a tough stretch like this -- back when he was the offensive coordinator at East Carolina in the early 2010s.

He said he's handling the Trojans' stretch of four losses in five games much better than he did ECU's 5-7 season back in 2011.

Above all, he reiterated his confidence that his USC program will find its way through and out of this and back to what everyone thought he was building coming off of last year.

"You know, I was young then -- or younger. I like to think younger. And you know, I, like a lot of people, at that point, I rode the emotional rollercoaster as a coach. I just hadn’t been through it enough yet, especially when I had the type of responsibility I had there. I didn’t have as much perspective. Now, I stay a little more even-keeled," Riley said. "I know what the good is. I know what the bad is. I know what we’ve gotta do to fix it. I know what it’s going to take. I know we’re going to get it done, and you’ve gotta be able to take any situation that comes up, whether you win a close game, you make that play at the end or you don’t, there’s still a whole lot else that’s going to have to continue to improve to go where we need to go, and I know all that.

"I know we’re going to get there. It’s just one day at a time right now, put your right foot in front of the left and keep moving. You do that, you’ve got the right people, and you’re at the right place, good things are going to happen. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

Riley also assessed the depth of the team this year via the transfer portal haul, announced that cornerback Ceyair Wright is not with the program right now, shared more thoughts on the defensive performance and adjustment last week, thoughts on UCLA and more.

Watch the full interview here and scroll down for a complete transcript of his comments.

Lincoln Riley transcript ...

Was there anything that you saw that gives you signs of hope for what the defense COULD be?

"Yeah. The biggest positive in the game is we did some really good things in the run game. We held a team that’s really good running the football quite a bit under their average. One of the big goals for us in the game was not give up explosive plays in the run game, and we did a really nice job of that. So I thought some of the adjustments the coaches made, the kids made, showed up in that regard. Obviously, that’s gotta carry over to the pass defense. We’ve gotta limit it there. But I thought that, looking at the game to me, was the single biggest improvement that was made. Yeah, sure you can. You think about these systems and all that, it takes months and months and at times years and years with players to get them to play at a high level.

"So all of a sudden, you’re making a couple of tweaks here in a short amount of time, and you’re doing it in the middle of playing some really good competition. We’ve got to make Week 2 of it our advantage. We’ve gotta be better at it. The staff has gotta be better. Like, everything should be a little cleaner this week. We were very clear with the guys what they did well on Monday. We were very clear on the things that have to improve if we’re gonna play the way we expect to play on Saturday."

This is the first extended losing streak you've endured since you were at East Carolina -- what have you learned through the process?

"That was probably the toughest year that I’ve had as a coach. It was Year 2 at East Carolina. We’d gotten off, in some ways similar to this, the program wasn’t in a tough place like this one was when we took it over, but we’d had a decent first year, came back second year, had a bunch of injuries, bunch of things didn’t go our way, we didn’t play well at times. We lost a couple of really close ones. I remember it was a really tough year to go through. I’d never been through anything like that. I was kind of down in the dumps for a little while, honestly. What came out of that, though, was it pushed me to be better. It pushed the program to be better. We found some guys that were really tough, hard-minded kids, especially some of the young guys in that program at the time, that then took off to becoming what we became the next several years. It really became a springboard there. That’s probably the biggest thing I learned from it.

"Then I think you gotta – you know, I was young then. Or younger. I like to think younger. And you know, I, like a lot of people, at that point, I rode the emotional rollercoaster as a coach. I just hadn’t been through it enough yet, especially when I had the type of responsibility I had there. I didn’t have as much perspective. Now, I stay a little more even-keeled. I know what the good is. I know what the bad is. I know what we’ve gotta do to fix it. I know what it’s going to take. I know we’re going to get it done, and you’ve gotta be able to take any situation that comes up, whether you win a close game, you make that play at the end or you don’t, there’s still a whole lot else that’s going to have to continue to improve to go where we need to go, and I know all that. I know we’re going to get there. It’s just one day at a time right now, put your right foot in front of the left, and keep moving. You do that, you’ve got the right people, and you’re at the right place, good things are going to happen. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

You talked about how you felt the depth was improved this year, in what ways have you seen the transfers/freshman help in that way this year?

"I think some of the depth has shown on the offensive line. We played obviously some different units and different guys. We’ve been able to withstand a season-ending injury early in the year to one of our starters and I would say honestly kind of the same thing on the defensive line as well. You lose a starter in Solo right there at the beginning of the year. So yeah, I think there’s been some positives there. Is there areas where we want more, do we have to be better in those spots, yes. I think the secondary is one of the groups. Obviously the other day, it was fairly extremely. I don’t know if it matters how many people you have if you have the number of people who are limited that we have. But yeah, I think it’s better, but needs to get better and that’s going to be a year-by-year process to be able to build up these rooms."

Do you have an update on Ceyair Wright?

"I don’t, I don’t. He’s not with us right now, but that’s all I can say about it."

Do you plan on more young guys getting playing time to evaluate them?

"Um, bowl game is probably a different conversation. Specifically for a lot of these guys because it doesn't count in terms of their four-game redshirt. RIght now, it’s anything that we can do, any player that we can use to go play well and win this game this Saturday. That’s been the focus now. If we’ve got guys at any of the positions that aren’t playing at a high level or aren’t getting it done and we’ve got somebody we want to take a look at, we’re not going to hesitate even though the importance of this game coming up, but yeah, you’re probably talking about two different conversations."

Thoughts on UCLA now having a good defense but a struggling offense?

"Yeah, yeah, it’s hard to time it out sometimes where it all clicks at the same time and they’ve obviously had some different lineups, obviously the different quarterbacks and all that offensively. And they lost, they obviously lost some really good players from last year’s offense so probably where it lies there – I’m not there so I don’t want to pretend to know what happened. Defensively, they’ve done a really nice job. They’ve got a tremendous front seven, those guys have stayed healthy, they’ve been consistent and they’ve really driven that defense and they’ve got some play out of the back end as well and just been really, really consistent. So yeah, they’ve done a really good job, which it shows you, when you get that right group together and you can get a little bit of momentum like they have defensively, you can really push it and ride it on any side of the ball and you’ve got to give them credit, they’ve done a really nice job."

How have you been more involved with the defense in recent weeks?

"Yeah, I've definitely spent more time with those guys here the last couple of weeks trying to help them where I can and give them perspective. ANd it’s not – I’ve been in that position too, and it’s not the easiest position to step into, especially considering the timing, the circumstances, kind of where we’re at in the season, where we’re at in the schedule and all that. So I want to provide support, as much support to those guys as I can and I’ve certainly spent more time over there in the last week and a half. And yeah, I think going forward, there’s a lot of questions to be answered there. Obviously a lot of this is going to change and unfold here over the next several weeks and I think like anything, we’ll make the changes that we’re going to make, we’ll get this group together and we’ll decide what the best course of action is in terms of a person that we bring in, how that changes roles on the current staff, roles on the future staff, it’s a really big picture question that we look forward to answering as this unfolds."