Lincoln Riley pleased with the ability of USC's defense to settle in, finish strong

USC put together perhaps its best defensive performance of the season in its win over Washington State last weekend. Lincoln Riley’s team made a statement on that end of the field and even with several key pieces.

Following the game, Riley was extremely complimentary of his defense for finishing strong and eliminating any chance of a comeback for the Cougars last weekend. Here were his’s full comments on the defense responding and playing a great game after losing two starters:

“Yeah, we certainly settled in well the other night. And particularly proud of — after you know not having Shane Lee and then and then the [Calen] Bullock ejection, you can at that point, especially against a good offense, explosive dangerous quarterback, you can go a few different ways. And it all depends how you handle it. I thought we made some key adjustments. Guys handled some new roles. We had some guys, obviously, that needed to step up with those with those two guys being out. And they did that very well.

“Then, I thought we played a really solid game on the back end. It was very important, with the way that [Cameron] Ward scrambles around, you get caught sometimes in between. Like, do I go get the quarterback? Do I match coverage? You got to be really sharp and really disciplined. And we did a nice job. As you notice, like a lot of times, even when he scrambled around, he didn’t get many of those big shots down the field that a guy like that can get against you.

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“And we got obviously a ton of pressure on him. I mean, we hit him a lot. We sacked him a lot. We had a lot of TFLs. We had a couple other opportunities to get him down. He’s not easy to get on the ground. But a few others that we would have liked to finish.

“So yeah, a pretty complete defensive effort. Did a nice job limiting the big plays. And I really love how we finished the game. Not just the second half, but the entire second half. Especially right there at the end. You have a chance as a team to really just kind of suffocate an opponent. You chew up a ton of clock with the offense. Defense is getting stops, special teams is executing in those moments. And you make it very difficult for a team to be able to to come back on you. It was cool to see.

“We haven’t finished a game like that yet. We’ve won. We’ve separated from some people. Obviously had to come from behind and win once. So it was cool to see us win in a different way. And you’re right, the defense certainly was the key part of that.”