Lincoln Riley quotes following USC's 38-20 loss to UCLA

Here’s everything USC head coach Lincoln Riley said about the 38-20 loss to the UCLA Bruins, the 1-5 finish over the second half of the 2023 season and where his program goes from here.

Riley Opening Statement

“Very, very disappointing. I mean, no other way to put it. Told the guys in the locker room I’ve clearly not done a good enough job here in the second half of the season getting this team ready to go. Didn’t do a good enough job today getting our offense ready to go. Another game very similar to Notre Dame. Missed opportunities, obviously a ton of turnovers. Offensively, the turnovers and the fourth down stops. Turnover for a touchdown. Defensively, we did some really good things, especially with being put in just horrible field position with all the turnovers just all day. But didn’t get off the field quite enough on third downs. And that’s the name of the game. We just didn’t play good enough in any way. It felt like there were some opportunities, being here at home, where we had a chance to grab some momentum, really get going there. A couple stops, obviously the deal right before halftime, and we just flat-out didn’t play good enough.

I mean, just extremely disappointing to finish this way with obviously how well we started the season. I know our guys are disappointed, coaches are disappointed, I’m disappointed. I know our fans are disappointed, and they should be. I mean there’s no excuses. It’s below what we expect here. It’s below the standard. And I gotta do a much better job. And I own all that. I’m going to fight my ass off in every single way to make sure this thing gets to where it’s supposed to be. We keep having guys in our program like these two guys sitting next to me, then we’ll have one great shot as time goes on.

Appreciative for these guys and a lot of the guys in the locker room. A lot of guys laid it on the line. There’s been a lot of great things happen here in the first couple of years and there’s a long ways to go with this. It’s certainly a very tough moment because you know, more than anything, wanted these guys to go out with the win here on senior day.

So that’s where we’re at. Team will take a little bit of time now. It’s been a long night game stretch. We’ll take a little bit of time to get these guys back in the weight room a little bit, get them home for Thanksgiving, get a chance to reset, find out where the next game is. And then obviously start working on the future in terms of the next game and beyond.”

On USC’s running game against UCLA’s defense

“They’re good. I mean, it’s the best D-line that we’ve played this year, which we kind of thought that coming in. They’re a good group. We didn’t play very good in the run game. I mean, we didn’t. We tried there. We just weren’t getting a whole lot of momentum with it. We got kind of rolling there in the passing game — I think we had almost 300 yards passing at half. So we were making some big plays and starting to move the ball there. But yeah, the run defense and our inability to run the ball was a big part of it because then those good pass rushers are to able to start teeing off, and obviously not the situation that you want to be in. We knew coming in we were going to need to run it well and we were gonna need to need to be pretty good in the short passing game — kind of quick passing game to be able to get the ball out of our quarterback’s hands. We did okay in the short passing game. The run game certainly wasn’t good enough.”

Riley on what more he could have done over the past six games

“Everything. I don’t know that it’s more. I don’t know that I could put more minutes into it than what I do. But it’s performance-based at the end of the day. And you look back and say, we have fighters in there, we’ve had a tough stretch. I think you look back on it, you know, in some of the close games, we’ve not been able to win and capitalize on those. I think we’ll look back and really, that was kind of the key stretch of the season. The season probably came down to, you know, four or five plays and that we didn’t make. We got to find a way to make those. And then we had two games like this one today where, just turnovers and really just didn’t even give ourselves a chance to win by the way that we played and that’s just unacceptable.

You may lose a close one here and there, where it’s just right there one play here or there. But to not give yourself a chance, like today, it’s unacceptable. So I gotta be better. I mean, there’s no way to look at this and say, I did any kind of a good job and then we got the result that we did in the second half of the season. So I gotta be better every single way possible.”

Riley on whether the players were mentally ready for that game

“Were we a little worn down now? Yeah. I mean, we’ve played nine barn-burners in a row. I mean, every single one of the last nine have been close. Now obviously, had we played better in some of them, they wouldn’t have all been close. But yeah, do I think we were a little bit worn down emotionally, some of the close losses and nine-straight heavy games — probably the toughest nine-game stretch that any college football play team played anywhere. Yeah, I think I’d look back on it and say yes. But the reality is you play better and you coach better then you’re not in that many. You go make one of those plays in several games we played against top teams this year, you make one of those plays that win and all of a sudden the momentum that comes along with that, just everything feels a little bit different when you do. We didn’t do it. We didn’t do it today. It’s incredibly disappointing. But it’s also — I told them in there, it’s also incredibly motivating. Because I want to, for a lot of reasons, and again, some of these guys up here Shane [Lee] and [Justin] Dedich, and several more in the locker room that helped get this thing started here. He didn’t have to come back. You know, he didn’t have to come back. He didn’t have to transfer here. As time goes on, I want to validate what they did. And we’re going to. And we are going to be great. It sucks right now. It hurts right now. But I’ve never been more motivated and have more of a fire in my belly than I do right now.”

On offseason changes and evaluations

“We’ve already made one pretty big change. You go back and look at everything, and you do it whether you’re 7-5 or whether you’re 10-2. You do that all the time. That’s a constant here. You know, the reality is, there’s gonna be things to fix. I mean, like I’ve said a few times, you go change three plays this year and we’ve probably won three more games. And had we made those plays, the issues that were still there that had to improve were still gonna be there. We’ve got to continue to do a better job of growing in every area. We knew this was gonna be a climb. We knew that’s what we signed up for, like I’ve told you guys. And we gotta keep climbing. Everybody wants the clean, smooth road to the top. And that’s for the movies, man. The road to the top is jagged. And it’s gonna take its different twists and turns, especially coming from where this was. But we got to stay together as a program. We got to stay together as a fan base. We got to stay together as a university. This is the tough times that you push through for the great things on the other side of it. And those people, if you’re willing to push through it, you get to those opportunities and ours are coming.”

Riley on whether there was anything missing in terms of culture late in the year

“It’d be interesting to go back and take stock of that. We got in a bunch of heavy games. There’s points where I would say the fight of this team, the resilience of this team, coming back in a lot of the games and giving us a chance to win — we won a couple of them, we didn’t win a couple of them. So I would look at some of that and say there was definitely growth. But certainly not winning some of those close games, playing the game like we did today say there’s obviously still clearly a lot of work to do.”