Lincoln Riley, USC not dwelling on loss against Notre Dame
There’s no sugarcoating what happened to USC in South Bend last weekend. Even so, Lincoln Riley knows that the Trojans have to now move on in order to continue to chase what might still be up for grabs.
Riley addressed his team’s 48-20 loss to Notre Dame on ‘Trojans Live’ on Monday. He said the last thing that USC can do is to continue to think about the loss to the Irish, especially since, in a lot of ways, the defeat came in large part due to self-inflicted wounds.
“We can’t dwell on it,” Riley stated. “That’s the main thing. We’ve got some big opportunities in front of us right now as a football team.”
“We’re disappointed with the way we played,” said Riley. “That’s not representative of what we expect – our expectations, our standard. Just a lot of missed opportunities in that game that, certainly, we regret. We hate that we missed them and weren’t at our best. I think our best would have been good enough.”
The other reason that USC can’t spend too much time on Notre Dame is because of what’s ahead of them. They play five more Pac-12 matchups from here including four in the Top-25. With No. 14 Utah on deck, Riley knows the Trojans need to put the past behind them in order to give the Utes the appropriate attention.
“You’ve got to bounce back, right? This is, obviously, the perfect game, the perfect opportunity to be able to do that against a really good Utah team that we know very, very well. A staff and players that we have a lot of respect for,” said Riley. “You’ve got to give them a lot of credit for what they’ve done over the last several years. It’ll be a big-time matchup”
The good news is that, from what Riley said, the Trojans did return to practice with the correct mindset. Now, it’s about maintaining that approach in order to continue to get the best out of his guys the rest of the way.
“Our guys, I think, have handled it well. It was a very disappointed locker room but, certainly, not defeated by any stretch. They came back with a lot of resolve today, had a very spirited practice,” said Riley. “We know that we haven’t been at our best here for a few weeks, haven’t been clicking quite on all cylinders. We’re very aware. We’re also very aware of what we’re capable of.”
“A lot of times when things aren’t going your way in this game? You can feel like it’s really, really far away and, in reality, it’s not,” Riley continued. “There’s a couple things here and there where if we can flip it, which we can? Then this team can play very, very well. It can beat anybody on our schedule the rest of the way through. Our guys believe that, they see that.”
USC has slowly dropped out of the playoff picture over the last few weeks and, at No. 18, now has a lot of work ahead to get back in the race at all. Riley doesn’t mind that position, though, as it’s going to force the Trojans to get after it through their work in order to have a shot at their ultimate goals that are left.
“We’ve got to go work, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves. That’s the only way, when you’re in a little bit of a rut, that you get yourself out of it,” said Riley. “You’ve got to go back to work and our guys have certainly had that mentality so far.”