Here are the highlights from the press conferences following USC’s 30-27 loss to BYU:
Head coach Clay Helton
Opening statement on the loss:
“Great college football game. Credit to BYU. I thought they played a hell of a football game under Kalani [Sitake]. Kids played extremely hard, and they made one more play than we did tonight. Anytime you have three turnovers to the other team’s none and you’re on the road, that’s gonna put you in a hole. Tonight we came up one play short of getting out of that hole. I love how the kids keep fighting and keep competing. This is one game early in the season. We’ll correct it and we’ll move on to the next one. This is gonna special team, mark my words, because there are special kids on this team. They’re learning with every snap and I’m proud of them. I look forward to the next opportunity to compete.”
On what he saw on Kedon Slovis’ interception throw in overtime:
“We’ll have to watch it on tape. It was a spacing play to try to hit one of the voids. We’ll have to be able to see where it was. My gut tells me they went strong rotation. I think the backside might be a little more open, but we’ll see.”
If the team can stick to its “so what, now what?” mantra after this loss:
“No question. That’s what I told them in there. This team is built for this, to have adversity and then overcome it. This is a non-conference game early in the season that we’ll have to dig our way out of. We got a big game next week again, against another great Utah team. We don’t have anytime to sulk. It’s Friday night. We got to get on this plane and we got to get right back to work tomorrow morning.”
On if the team showed him maturity in the BYU game:
“I think they’re tough as heck, to be honest with you. You have two early turnovers in the red zone and they only get 10 points out of that. We were able to create one of those stops and then get it back to a 17-17 ballgame at halftime on the road. Get up in the second half, and then they make a couple, we make a couple plays and we find ourselves in overtime. I thought the defense did a really nice job on the first series of overtime and we had the opportunity to close the door. The ball bounced the wrong way. It happens sometimes in football.”
On why USC ran on second-and-long in overtime:
“To get a third-and-manageable, which it did. We went from second-and-10 to third-and-five. Thought it was a nice run, thought it was a good play call by Graham [Harrell]. Instead of all of a sudden you miss a pass and you get a third-and-10 situation, he got it to a manageable distance. That’s all you can ask for is you try to get half on second down and then complete the third down and get the first. But we didn’t get that done.”
On how much the two early interceptions affected USC’s game plan:
“I thought Graham did a nice job, because as you saw tonight it was a ton of drop-eight, trying to force the run game. It was one of those where they were going to force the issue there. Had some RPOs, were able to get a deep ball shot.”
On all the noise around the program following the Lynn Swann resignation and what he expects after this loss:
“We don’t worry about noise. We live in Los Angeles, California. There’s a ton of damn noise and it’s every day. What we have to focus on is our job, and doing our job and winning the next game. I thought our kids prepped extremely well and they practiced our tails off this week. I hurt for them, to be honest with you, because they invested a lot in it. We made some mistakes that lose you a ballgame on the road. We got to correct and we got three pretty good ones coming up that we’re going to have to make corrections and move on.”
On playing Utah on Friday:
“We don’t have time [to dwell on the BYU loss]. We’re going to get on a plane and we got to go to work tomorrow, watch this tape, clean it up, put in a new game plan and get ready for a full-pad practice on Monday. So it’s not a lot of time to feel sorry for yourself, and that’s what everybody was saying in there. It’s one game. We got to correct it and move on. We plan on doing big things this season and it’s early in the season. I like this football team and I like these kids and I like their mindset. They want to do great things.”
On why USC didn’t go back to running back Markese Stepp more after his early success:
“He did a nice job. He put the ball on the ground one time, and that’s where he’s got to learn. In these type of games, it’s a violent game and we were fortunate to get the ball back. I thought he did a great job on third-and-short situations and even fourth-and-short, trusting the kid in that arena.”
On why receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown wasn’t targeted in the game:
“They allowed us to get on the outside. You look at your two leading receivers and it was mostly on the outside. They played a lot of Cover Three, it was drop-eight up underneath. We tried to move him outside a couple times in 12-personnel. What I like about the offense is there’s been a leading receiver in each game. Ra was it last game, Tyler [Vaughns] was it in Game 1, Pitt was it in Game 3. It’s hard in this offense to just focus on one guy.”
Quarterback Kedon Slovis
On the overtime interception:
“I just thought I saw grass in the middle of the field and it got batted and they made a good play.”
His evaluation of his performance:
“A lot of mistakes. A lot of places to get better. But, we had some spurts there, too.”
On his first road game:
“It’s cool. It’s a different feel for sure. It’s a hostile environment. But at the end of the game we have to play better.”
On his mindset after the first two interceptions:
“You just got to stay positive and one thing you can’t let happen is you can’t lose your confidence. You do that and you’re screwed. You got to try to do your best and keep throwing the ball and trust what you see.”
On what he saw from the BYU defense:
“Eventually they went to a drop-eight and that’s where we started running the ball more. But I’ll see more on film. We kinda went into the game saying we’re going to have to run the ball at points and we did run the ball well at times in the game, too.”
On what felt different for him from a week ago:
“That’s a frustrating thing when they go drop-eight, it’s less space in the defense and you hit the check downs a lot more. That gets frustrating as a quarterback, when you want to push the ball downfield.”
Wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr.
If he got an explanation on the offensive pass interference call against him in the fourth quarter:
“No. So, refs, they don’t really like to explain so we just got to keep playing. So they just threw it, and just next play.”
If he thought he got his foot in on a third-down pass play that was ruled incomplete:
“Of course, yes, but obviously they didn’t say so, so that’s all that matters.”
Running back Markese Stepp
If he thought he should have gotten more carries:
“I think I did my job. We just came up short. We’ll come back together and have a great game plan for [Utah].”
If he felt he maximized his opportunities:
“I think I just took advantage of every opportunity I was given. [Vavae Malepeai, Stephen Carr], all the running backs prepared me for that, letting me know about the assignments, I have to take care of, what I have to read and such. Hats off to them and hats off to the o-line for helping me take advantage of those opportunities”
If he felt the coaches going to him more down the stretch was a vote of confidence:
“Just shows that they trust all of us. Any back could have been in there.”
If he was surprised he didn’t play in the third quarter:
“That’s something you have to ask Coach Helton.”
Defensive tackle Jay Tufele
On why the defensive line struggled to wrap up BYU quarterback Zach Wilson:
“He’s a great football player. We’re just rushing our lanes and they got one up on us. That’s about it.”
