Lincoln Riley said Monday night during an appearance on the Trojans Live radio show that his team switched off against Colorado on Saturday.

USC had a 48-21 lead late in the third quarter against the Buffaloes. Everything was working in USC’s favor on the road. And then a couple of short routes got turned for big gains, a couple of tackles got missed, and CU started to rally.

The Buffs outscored the Trojans 21-0 over the final 16:03 of the game. They weren’t able to complete the comeback, but they did enough damage to make USC a target of major criticism even after a fifth win in five games.

“I’ve been in a few situations where we as a team allowed winning to not become fun and that’s not good,” Riley said on Monday. “We don’t want to sweep under the rug the areas to get better — we would never do that. But we also don’t want to under-appreciate these guys going out and battling and getting a tough win on the road against a good opponent.”

Riley mentioned at one point that Colorado was a top-20 team in the AP poll “a few days” before they met the Trojans. CU was certainly a team that had captured the attention of the larger college football universe. And it is a team led by an outstanding quarterback in Shedeur Sanders.

Riley credited the Colorado crowd for staying engaged even when the Trojans were up big early.

He thought USC let its foot off the gas in the second half. And once Colorado started to make its move, he felt players panicked.

“Do I think we had some guys that probably thought the game was over and fell asleep a little bit? Yeah, I do. We were beating up on them pretty good. Do I think we had some guys that thought that? Yeah, I do,” Riley said.

“I think we had some young guys that lost a little bit of focus and missed a few plays and what’s crazy is once a team that doesn’t have momentum gets a little bit of it, then all of the sudden you’re gonna play an even better opponent.”

Colorado had 318 yards and 27 points in the second half. It averaged 7.2 yards a play and cut USC’s offensive efficiency in half — 10.1 yards per play in the first 30, 5.2 in the final 30.

“Did we have some guys, when we lost momentum, that panicked a little bit, that went away from doing some of the things that got you such a big lead in the first place? Sure, we did,” Riley said.

Riley has had to deal with this before, though. His Oklahoma teams were often criticized for those same issues. Perhaps the most famous instance: Riley’s 2017 Sooners had a 31-17 halftime lead on Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinal game and lost by six in double-overtime.

Georgia scored 21 unanswered to start the second half.

Riley feels his team has responded well so far to the successful but otherwise frustrating weekend.

“I think we’re coming together in a really unique way,” he said. “This practice we just had is probably one of the best Monday practices that we’ve had as a football team period. So, I know they’re very excited to attack the areas we need to attack.”