Tag: Eric Musselman

Eric Musselman offers blunt assessment of USC’s season outlook

Eric Musselman knows he does not have a full plate of options at USC in his first season. The Trojans are fighting an uphill battle all the way.

It has not been the best start to the season for Eric Musselman and the USC men’s basketball team.

On Wednesday night, the Trojans fell 68-60 at home to Oregon in the first Big Ten game for both programs. With the loss, USC fell to 5-4 on the season. With only three more nonconference buy games left before conference play gets into full swing, things are not looking great for the Trojans in Year 1 under Musselman.

Following the loss, Musselman was asked by Luca Evans of the Orange County Register about his outlook for this year’s team, and he gave an extremely honest assessment.

“I don’t know how many Big Ten games we’re gonna win,” Musselman said. “What I do know is, if you put forth that effort—from a culture standpoint, you know—I don’t think any, you walk out of the building, you think the team played hard, you think the team played hard, you think the team gave great effort, and you think the team didn’t close the game. Which we didn’t.

“We were right there. And like I said, if you lead for 30 minutes, it’s the last 10 minutes of play that we’re not used to winning as a unit.

“There’s probably going to be other nights that we play really well, and whether we can walk away with the win or not, I don’t know in year one. But the effort was there, other than defensively, down the stretch.”

Given Musselman’s prior success at Arkansas and Nevada, the Trojans’ program should be in good hands long term. But if early results are any indication, USC fans might need to wait a year or two before the victories start to come in.

USC men’s basketball runs into harsh reality in the California desert

Eric Musselman and USC know that this roster is a long-term project and not a quick fix. That was made clear by two losses in Palm Desert, California.

The reality surrounding USC men’s basketball is not a pleasant one, but it’s also not something to panic about in a long-term context. Eric Musselman is going through his own growing pains at USC, but what is happening this year might have little bearing on what happens in future seasons in Los Angeles. For the moment, though, life isn’t fun for the Men of Troy. They lost a second game in Palm Desert, California, falling 83-73 to New Mexico on Friday night.

The Trojans could not score on Thursday in their loss to Saint Mary’s, posting just 36 points. Friday, they couldn’t defend, allowing 83 to New Mexico. It’s always something, and it’s not just one thing, for the Trojans. That is the biggest concern. If the team had one flaw, Musselman could address it and the collective would have a chance to be really good. However, this team doesn’t have one flaw. It has many. Opponents are able to expose them, and the fact of the matter is that USC is just not ready to win big right now. The NCAA Tournament is an unrealistic goal at this point. USC has to simply improve before it can entertain bigger goals.

New Mexico unleashed a 14-0 run to break this game open in the second half after USC — down 13 — had cut UNM’s lead to just four, at 47-43. USC goes through scoring droughts, and it also goes through five-minute segments in which other teams pile up the points. At both ends of the floor, USC doesn’t have the physical heft to overpower comparably skilled opponents. Even against smaller teams — as we saw the past few weeks against Idaho State, UT Arlington, and Grambling — the Trojans couldn’t really separate from the opposition. A roster comprised of transfers was always going to need a developmental process, but the bigger point is that the transfers haven’t fit very well together.

Eric Musselman should recruit well. He will need to. In Year 1, however, he had to piece together a roster on the fly. This season will not look like future seasons. Right now, however, USC is taking its lumps, and there will probably be more lumps in the coming weeks.

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Four-star guard commits to USC men’s basketball

Bringing in a quality recruit during the same week in which it endured a blowout loss magnifies the importance of building the next USC basketball roster.

Earlier this week, USC men’s basketball landed a commitment from four-star guard Jerry Easter. This commitment takes on added meaning and significance in light of USC’s 35-point loss to Saint Mary’s on Thursday night. Rosters comprised mostly of transfers will lack early-season continuity and cohesion. Eric Musselman knows he has to build a foundation for the program’s future with quality recruiting, and here’s a really good addition for the Muss Bus.

A 6-4 guard, Easter is from Toledo, Ohio, but attends high school at Link Academy in Stamford, Connecticut. On3 Consensus ranks him as the No. 33 overall player in the class of 2025.

Easter is USC’s first commit of the 2025 class, which will mark the first full recruiting cycle for new head coach Eric Musselman. Musselman took over the program in April after spending the previous five seasons as the head coach at Arkansas.

Given the state of the Trojans’ roster the time of his hiring, Musselman’s 2024-2025 team is made up almost entirely of transfers, as we noted above. Musselman’s 2025 recruiting class will be his first real step towards building the program in his image.

USC currently sits at 5-2 on the 2024-2025 season after the Saint Mary’s on Thanksgiving Night.

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USC men’s basketball endures brutal defeat against Saint Mary’s in Palm Desert

USC men’s basketball has a roster which will simply need time to develop. That might not be satisfying to anyone, but it’s the truth, and people need to know it.

Eric Musselman came to USC basketball and did not inherit a roster. He inherited a situation in which Andy Enfield recruits decommitted from the Trojans and Isaiah Collier left for the NBA. Musselman would have wanted some of Enfield’s recruits and prime players to stay, but that didn’t happen, and there’s no way to hold Muss responsible for any of that. No incoming coach can be held responsible for that kind of situation. Musselman had to throw together his roster from the transfer portal. Saint Mary’s is one of the worst opponents for a transfer-filled team to face in the early weeks of a college basketball season.

That was made apparent on Thanksgiving Night in Palm Desert, Calif.

Do we need to bother to give you any analysis in a game which ends 71-36? Do we need to explain anything about a game in which USC went 0 for 12 on 3-point shots and scored only 15 points in the second half? Do we need to offer a research paper or dissertation on the state of USC basketball when the Trojans scored six points in a span of 11 minutes connecting the last 7:30 of the first half and the first 3:30 of the second half?

We’re done here. This team is a work in progress. Quick fixes won’t happen. This season has become a process of molding a team and learning what works. The idea that USC was an NCAA Tournament-ready team in the first weeks of the season has been blown out of the water.

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Eric Musselman loses first game as USC basketball coach

USC shot over 55 percent in the first half and under 34 percent in the second half. USC was inconsistent at both ends of the floor and paid the price.

The USC men’s basketball season finally encountered a moment of real adversity on Sunday night in the Galen Center. Eric Musselman lost his first game as the Trojans’ bench boss. USC fell 71-66 to California in a weird game which took a drastic turn in the last six and a half minutes.

The score of the Cal game was 43-42 USC at halftime. The Trojans played a racehorse game against UT Arlington last week in which defense was optional. USC led 51-42 at halftime of that game and then continued to play ineffective defense in the second half. USC’s offense was able to overcome its lack of defense in a 98-95 win. The Cal game looked like another shootout after one half, and USC’s defense was plainly ineffective for most of the night. USC’s guards were beaten on the dribble. They couldn’t keep Cal’s guards out of the paint, which created all sorts of opportunities for the Golden Bears.

However, midway through the second half, the game began to take on different dimensions. USC began to dig in on defense. The faucet of points for Cal got shut off. USC gained a 64-63 lead with just under seven minutes left in regulation and was showing signs of steering this game in a different direction.

If you were watching the game, you would have assumed that if USC could get stops and hold Cal to a modest point total in the second half, the Trojans would have won. After all, they shot over 55 percent from the field in the first half. They were on pace to score 86 points at halftime. If USC held Cal to 29 second-half points, 71 for the full game, that pointed to a USC win.

Except it didn’t.

The Trojans’ offense, which flowed so well in the first 30 minutes, came to a grinding halt in the last 6:30. USC scored exactly two points in that span of time. Leading scorer Desmond Claude missed two huge free throws with a little over two minutes left. Terrance Williams had a wide-open 3-pointer in the last minute to give USC the lead, but it wasn’t even close. The Trojans went stone cold, dying at the 3-point line and not getting enough free throw opportunities to collect cheap points. A night which started with bad defense ended with bad offense, and USC fell short against its former Pac-12 neighbor.

Eric Musselman didn’t have time to recruit his first USC roster. Remember, this roster was almost completely created from the transfer portal. We are seeing the limitations of that roster. Musselman has to find a way to get everyone to contribute more at both ends of the floor.

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USC men’s basketball needs to quit playing with its food

USC is going to get burned one of these days if it keeps playing with fire. The Trojans have to set the bar higher and not let inferior teams hang around.

For the second consecutive game, USC men’s basketball narrowly scraped by an inferior opponent. On Wednesday night, the Trojans held off UT Arlington 98-95 to improve to 3-0 on the 2024-2025 season. This comes less than a week after the USC struggled against Idaho State, prevailing by a score of 75-69 in a game which was neck and neck with two minutes left.

The good news for the Trojans is that they continue to win games. But given the level of competition, their play is not exactly inspiring a lot of confidence right now.

Plain and simple, Idaho State and UT Arlington are teams the Trojans should be blowing out. (Maybe not by the same margin that the women’s team destroyed Cal State Northridge, but they should still be winning handily.) The fact that these games have been as close as they have is definitely a cause for concern.

Right now, the Trojans are playing with their food. If they continue to do so, they will eventually choke.

USC still has five more games against mid-major opponents. If the Trojans continue to play like they have in the past two, losing at least one of them feels inevitable, and that will put a dent in their March Madness aspirations.

Given the difficulty of playing a Big Ten schedule, it is crucial that the Trojans beat the teams they are supposed to in these early-season buy games if they want to be a serious NCAA Tournament contender. If USC continues to mess around as it ha the past two games, that will not happen.

We saw this under Andy Enfield. The Trojans could get by on sheer talent at times, but that was not sustainable. Eric Musselman has to get his players to defend a lot better than they have. Winning can’t lead to overconfidence; these close shaves must translate into more urgency and greater attention to detail.

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USC overcomes weak defense to survive UT Arlington, stay undefeated

The Golden State Warriors and USC basketball have both beaten the Mavericks this week. USC beat the UT Arlington Mavericks in the Galen Center.

In November, there is no time to worry about style points. This is the month of the college basketball season when teams play smaller conference opponents in an attempt to gain confidence and rhythm. Losing one of these “buy games” can be devastating for a team’s NCAA Tournament chances. The main thing is to win, no matter how ugly or shaky the performance might be. USC basketball and Eric Musselman have managed to stay unbeaten despite two very unsteady performances. Concerns exist, but as long as the wins keep coming, the season is on schedule. USC did stay on schedule with a 98-95 win over UT Arlington on Wednesday night in the Galen Center.

USC had a nine-point halftime lead, 51-42. The Trojans did not play good defense in the first half but still had a working margin because they shot the ball extremely well. They naturally hoped to build their lead in the second half, but UT Arlington was very “Mavericky.” The Mavs kept tossing in 3-pointers to reduce USC’s lead. UT Arlington finished the game 16 of 24 on 3-pointers, giving the Mavericks a plus-30 margin in points scored from 3-pointes. UTA had 48 points on 16 triples, whereas USC had just 18 points on six long balls.

Arlington led 88-86 late in the game. USC was staring down the barrel of a horrible loss. Fortunately, Desmond Claude stepped up for the Trojans. He scored USC’s next eight points to give the Men of Troy a 94-90 lead with 19 seconds left. Claude finished with 26 points on a night when USC hit over 55 percent of its field goal attempts. Josh Cohen scored 19 points. Terrance Williams made his USC debut and added 18 for the victors, who are 3-0 this season and will try to win with a little less drama the next time they take the court.

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The big loser in USC football’s quarterback change? Eric Musselman

Eric Musselman and USC are 2-0, but the football team was still the big story of the week due to its QB change. It’s a reminder about what gets the headlines.

Monday night at USC basketball was supposed to be all about Eric Musselman. Coaching his first game in charge of the USC men’s basketball program, the “Muss Bus” impressed in his debut. The Trojans dominated UT Chattanooga in a wire-to-wire 77-51 victory. Unfortunately for Musselman, however, he only had the spotlight for barely an hour after the game ended. That was because around 10 p.m. local time on Monday night in Los Angeles, it was reported that the football team was making a change at quarterback, and turning to Jayden Maiava to start against Nebraska.

Suddenly, Musselman and the basketball team were pushed to the back page. With the attention of USC fans naturally turning toward the big football news, they quickly forgot about the impressive performance from Musselman’s team in a game they had just watched.

Oh, and to top it all off, there was an election the next day — that was kind of important.

Fortunately for Musselman, Monday was only the first game of a long season. He and his team will have plenty of other opportunities to play their way back into the spotlight. USC beat Idaho State on Thursday in a game which was not on national television. It’s just as well: USC didn’t play particularly well. Yet, the Trojans are 2-0 and are trying to build something special under Musselman.

For the time being, however, being pushed aside by football in the news cycle must have been at least a little bit frustrating for the new head coach.

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NBA MVP visits USC as Eric Musselman focuses on improving team culture

A brush with stardom occurred for young Trojan hoopers: A 7-time NBA All-Star made an appearance at USC basketball practice this week.

The USC Trojans and Eric Musselman had a surprise visitor during their basketball practice earlier this week. Joel Embiid, a seven-time NBA All-Star for the Philadelphia 76ers, dropped by the Galen Center to watch USC basketball practice on Wednesday.

The 76ers were in Los Angeles on Wednesday to face the Clippers when the former MVP, who is currently sidelined due to a suspension, decided to visit the team.

Embiid comically towered over head coach Eric Musselman in a picture posted to Musselman’s X/Twitter account the same day.

Later that evening, Musselman attended the Clippers versus Sixers matchup and met up with former Trojans Caleb Martin and Ricky Council IV after the game, evidenced by another X/Twitter post.

Musselman is having an immediate impact on USC. He intends to start his tenure with a main focus on changing the culture of the team. Bringing in a former NBA MVP certainly helps to achieve that goal.

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Eric Musselman is already making very good decisions at USC

Eric Musselman’s exhibition win over Gonzaga fed this USC team’s confidence. Going hard in an exo was easy to second-guess, but it was the right move for USC.

Exhibition games shouldn’t be seen as season-defining events. They are, after all, exhibitions. They certainly don’t mean a whole lot in professional sports, other than potentially unearthing some lower-end roster decisions which could carry long-term benefits. Generally, though, we don’t focus on how Patrick Mahomes or LeBron James perform in exhibitions. In college basketball, it is usually the same. These are simply games in which coaches get to coach their players and give them a test drive before the real season begins. However, there can be exceptions to all of this, and Eric Musselman might have created one such exception at USC basketball. Kevin Sweeney of Sports Illustrated told us this about USC’s exhibition win over No. 6 Gonzaga in late October:

“USC didn’t treat this like an exhibition, really pushed its starters to the brink and did everything it could to win the game. Probably a decent move by Muss – try to build some buy-in and confidence inside the locker room while getting a big-name win to build excitement with the fans. Was impressed with how Claude looked as essentially a full-time point guard (a new role for him) and the positional size and shooting they have from 1-4 is impressive,” Sweeney said.

That decision by Musselman to go all-in for an exhibition game certainly seemed to feed USC’s confidence as a team. The Trojans looked very, very good in their 77-51 win over Chattanooga in the regular season opener on Monday. They looked like a cohesive team despite having only one player on the roster who returned from last season’s Andy Enfield team. On defense and offense, USC looked like well-connected team which knew exactly what it was supposed to do and where it was supposed to be on the floor. USC looked like a well-coached team.

Musselman could have soft-pedaled the Gonzaga game. Interestingly enough, it’s obvious Gonzaga did not go hard in that exo versus USC. The Zags just beat No. 9 Baylor by 38 points on Monday night. They took it easy on USC. Yet, USC beating Gonzaga still carried real value for the Trojans, who looked very confident in their win over Chattanooga. Eric Musselman made the right chess move, and it could have a huge effect on USC’s season. Let’s hope it does.

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