Lincoln Riley was pleased with a 45-28 win, but not with the crispness with which USC achieved it Saturday night against Arizona State.

The Trojans sputtered a bit on the heels of an early bye week. They had 10 penalties. They had a turnover that led directly to an Arizona State touchdown. They didn’t really take control of the game until the fourth quarter, when a 15-7 frame gave USC enough distance to feel secure.

As it was so many times a season ago, tackling was an issue.

“The tackling was the biggest disappointment,” Riley said. “We had a lot of negative plays. We were, on the night, pretty clean in the run game in terms of gap assignments. But we did not tackle them well. We knew the back coming in was a tough runner. He’s a good runner. He runs out of a lot of tackles.

“I saw a lot of shoulders, a lot of guys kind of launching at guys trying for big hits and that fundamentally wasn’t where we needed to be.”

Early per-play data from PFF charged USC with 14 missed tackles. Bryson Shaw and Max Williams each had three. It’ll be worth waiting to see what USC’s analysis of the game yields, but regardless, Riley says they’ll harp on it during the upcoming week.

“That’ll be a big focus point,” Riley said. “Is it correctable? For sure. We’ve tackled well three out of the four (games) and we need to get back at it this week.”

Arizona State had 353 yards of offense. Adjusted for sacks — USC had eight of those — Arizona State averaged 5.7 yards per rushing attempt. Arizona State tailback Cameron Skattebo had 111 rushing yards, 79 receiving yards, and two total scores.

One of those scores served as a real lowlight for the USC defense — on a fourth-and-7 no less.

Riley pushed back against the notion this performance marked a step back for the team after its brilliant start. He said expecting USC to build off its last game when its last game featured a 49-3 halftime lead is “not reality” and stressed that road games always bring different challenges.

“The season’s just a climb,” he said. “Look at Florida State the other day. I mean, there are examples of that every year all the time. It was just simply a new challenge and I think what we’ll take from it is there were a lot of really positive things we did to come out and win despite a lot of those mistakes. And there’s a lot of those mistakes we’ll take a lot from and be better ahead. That’s the season, right?”