Lincoln Riley Talks 'Tough Loss' to Tulane and Upcoming 'Deep Dive' Into the USC Program

Head coach Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans saw a 45-30 lead with 4:30 remaining in the game completely evaporate against Tulane on Monday evening. All three phases contributed as the defense gave up two touchdowns, the offense allowed a safety and the special teams gave up a long kick return and muffed a kickoff. The hits just kept coming and the Trojans could do nothing to stop the Green Wave from eventually overpowering them en route to a 46-45 Tulane win in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic.

“As tough a loss as I can remember in my entire career,” Riley said. “Had the momentum a number of times. Obviously didn’t do a very good job finishing there at the end…Losses like this are always tough to digest.”

Riley said he thought his team “really laid it on the line” and complimented the Trojans’ preparation for this one. That was evident from the outset as USC came out strong in taking leads of 14-0 and then 28-14.

But USC’s defense ultimately let the Trojans down completely. Coming into the game, the major question was whether the USC defense could tackle Tulane running back Tyjae Spears. The answer was ‘No.’ And then ‘No’ again. And a few times it was ‘Heck no.’

Spears rushed for 205 of Tulane’s 305 yards on the ground. He averaged 12.1 yards per carry.

“Our tackling hurt us, and against the good back,” Riley said. “That was the story, their ability to run the football. Three hundred yards-plus rushing. I mean, that’s the entire game right there. And we didn’t do a good enough job at it, obviously. And when you don’t tackle good players and a good running back, that’s what happens.”

Riley on Defensive Coordinator Alex Grinch

Riley was asked after the game about his confidence level in defensive coordinator Alex Grinch. But the USC head coach said he wasn’t going to dive into any “big picture assessments” so close to the end of the game. Riley has always been a big supporter of Grinch and never showed any concern this season with the leadership on that side of the ball.

He did say, however, the big plays allowed and the poor tackling are “very, very alarming.”

With the season over, it will be time to assess everything about the program.

“We’ll take a deep dive into every part of it here over the next couple of weeks,” Riley said. “We’ll lay out a plan just like we did when we landed in LA, you know, 13 months ago. You take a deep dive of it. You assess what you got and how can we make it better, and then you go to work. Now we just repeat the process, knowing a little bit more about this roster and a little bit more about where we’re at and what we have coming back and what we’re going to add. We made a pretty good jump in year one, and I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t bet against this to make another big jump next year.”

Riley stressed that he feels good about a lot of the progress made in his first year at USC and he knew this was not viewed as a one-and-done situation for him or the staffers he brought with him.

“We know what we’re doing,” Riley said. “We know the areas that we have to get better we know the things that we have to address. We’ll spend a lot of time on it, get some clarity, let this one kind of soak in and get past it. And we go back to work. We didn’t come here for a one-year deal…This one hurts, but also it gives complete clarity on what we need to do next. And that’s go back to work and keep building and developing our program.”