USC coach Lincoln Riley discusses Trojans' loss to Oregon

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On Saturday, the USC football team fell 42-27 to Oregon in Eugene. With the loss, the Trojans fell to 8-3 on the season and were eliminated from the Big Ten and College Football Playoff races.

Following the game, USC head coach Lincoln Riley spoke to the media about the loss. Here are some of the highlights of what he had to say:

On the loss

“Great battle out there,” Riley said. “We had two good football teams really going at it. I thought the game was really back and forth in a lot of ways. I think we’ll look back on it and say the defining sequence of thegame was the missed field goal, penalty, and then touchdown. We got down there and didn’t score any points. That, along with the punt return. Other than that, both defenses and offenses made big plays. It was just a heavyweight battle, with two really good teams going at it.”

On USC’s numerous special teams miscues

“Our kicker has been one of the best, if not the best, in the country all year,” Riley said. “He didn’t hit the ballbadly; it just caught the bar and popped back out. On that punt return, we hit a kind of low-line drive punt, and it was probably our worst coverage of the day on top of that. That is one as a punter you try to avoid because it gets down fast. There was a lot of room, and we got held up in a couple of spots. We did not do a good job of leveraging the ball. Obviously, it was a huge play in the game. Oregon is a good offensive team, so you don’t want to give them something like that.”

On the struggles running the football

“We had a couple of busts,” Riley said. “J’Onre Reed got in there and gutted it out for us; he wasn’t veryhealthy. [Center] Killian [O’Connor] going down was a factor; there’s no question about that. Obviously, it was hard not having [offensive tackle Elijah] Paige. We missed a couple of assignments in the run game where we had opportunities. Oregon is good up front. We knew that. Their defensive line is good, and their defensive tackles did a nice job against us. We didn’t help that fact by missing a couple of assignments that hurt us. We didn’t run the ball nearly as well as we have, or as well as we expected to.”

On his team’s growth this season

“I mean, we are right there,” Riley said. “That was two heavyweight teams going at it. That was two good football teams right there. These two teams have won a lot of games. We are playing good enough right now that we are a sequence like that away from beating anybody. That is just how I feel: two goodteams going at it. We are going to keep getting better and better as time goes on. We have a good team, that is what this game tells me.”

On freshman wide receiver Tanook Hines

“He played well and made a lot of big plays down the field,” Riley said. “They gave a lot of attention to [Makai] Lemon. I mean Lemon still affected the game in a lot of ways. Tanook and Ja’Kobi [Lane] both made a lot of big plays. [Quarterback] Jayden [Maiava] made a lot of great throws to them down the field. He is a young guy who has a bright future.”

On the team’s mindset moving forward

“The season is not over,” Riley said. “We have a game next week. We are going to get ready for UCLA. We have won a bunch of games this year. The ones we haven’t won, we have been right there. We have a great opportunity to get win number nine this week. That is what we are going to put our focus on.”

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lincoln Riley reacts to USC football’s loss to Oregon

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