Top Takeaways From Eric Musselman’s Introduction As USC Basketball Coach

As far as coaching searches go, USC’s pursuit of a new men’s basketball coach was about as suspense-free as they come.

Almost as soon as former coach Andy Enfield was reported to be on his way out to SMU, the buzz began for Arkansas coach Eric Musselman as a top candidate to replace him. And just three days after Enfield’s departure was made official, Musselman was formally announced as the Trojans’ new coach Thursday.

And if one surveyed the coaching market as it stood this late in the cycle — with attractive coaches having already signed extensions with their current schools, and the most coveted mid-major coaches having already been poached for bigger jobs — this could have been a tough spot for athletic director Jen Cohen in her first major hire at USC.

If not for the very clear and immediate interest from Musselman, who despite a successful four-year run at a well-supported SEC program at Arkansas was readily open to taking the job.

“Not long at all,” Musselman said with a laugh, when asked how long it took to consider the opportunity. “Our family, even before Jen had called to say that we had the job, we knew that if offered, we were coming.”

RELATED: Watch Eric Musselman’s introductory press conference and subsequent interview with media

And USC was rightly every bit as interested.

“Jen identified Eric right away. That was her top choice immediately,” USC President Carol Folt said.

“This was a really competitive search. We had a lot of interest in this position. But it was very clear that the best of the best for USC men’s basketball was Eric Musselman,” Cohen said.

Indeed it was — as we covered in our breakdown of potential candidates earlier this week, Musselman was the only choice that truly made sense, aside from an unlikely longshot hire of an established star coach.

Musselman was 111-59 in five seasons at Arkansas, reaching the NCAA tournament in three of four possible postseasons (with the 2020 tournament cancelled due to Covid) and advancing to two Elight Eights and another Sweet 16. Before that, he went 110-34 in four seasons at Nevada, taking that mid-major program to three straight NCAA tournaments with a Sweet 16 appearance.

He had ties to Southern California, having attended college in San Diego, and had also been head coach of two NBA teams in the state — the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings.

Musselman has been a high-level recruiter who now gets to leverage the advantages of being in Los Angeles. He’s a high-energy, galvanizing personality taking over a program that has struggled to sustain attendance over the years.

This just made sense all around.

Cohen touched on all those points Friday the news conference to officially introduce Musselman as head coach.

“Throughout our conversations and all the other conversations we had with people who knew Eric, worked with Eric and competed against Eric, it became very clear that he was the right person at the right time for USC men’s basketball,” she said.

“He’s a proven winner. He not only builds elite, high-performing teams — he knows how to sustain them. He has a bold vision and a plan for USC basketball and it centers around very high expectations and standards for himself, for his players and for his staff. … We’re going to the Big Ten and we need an elite home court advantage, and Eric has proven that he can unite the student body, he can unite the fans, he can unite the community to fill up Galen Center to show everybody in the Big Ten that we have that homecourt advantage too.”

Yes, as far as coaching hires go, this one left little to critique or pick at. The timing of Enfield’s departure greatly limited USC’s options, but even if it hadn’t it would be hard to argue that USC could have done better than a coach who made six straight possible NCAA tournaments between two schools, reached two Elight Eights and two additional Sweet 16s in that time, was able to attract five-star recruits to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and very clearly truly wanted to be at USC.

With that said, here are five other takeaways from Musselman’s official USC introduction Friday …

We’ve already hit this point a couple times, but it merits further reinforcement because that wouldn’t be the case for all candidates.

As appealing as the USC brand is in general along with the geography and weather of Southern California, the reality remains that the Trojans have a limited history of elite success in men’s basketball with only three Sweet 16 appearances (two Elite Eights) in the last 60 years. And now going into the Big Ten, one of the perennially premier basketball leagues in the country, while having to totally rebuild the roster on the fly, with the aforementioned inconsistent fan support, this job comes with challenges.

That Musselman was so eager to not only take the position but to leave a good SEC gig in the process is quite a statement.

In fact, he was asked Friday whether he reached out to USC or Cohen called him first.

“Wow, that’s a good question,” he said. “I’m not sure who reached out first, to be honest. I gotta ask – that’s a really – we’ve had a lot of conversations. I will say when it came open, l knew right away that it was something of great interest. … I think sometimes, there’s just – you kind of click, like you can just feel a bond because there’s been other opportunities and maybe not on the same, you know, but with Jen, I mean, one, she’s got great energy but some of the things she had prioritized maybe I fit so that made our conversations really easy and comfortable. Again, maybe her outline of what she felt would work or needed or whatever word you want to use, maybe that had something to do with the conversations going as good as they did.”

Meanwhile, Musselman also emphasized how it was an attractive move for his family as a whole to get back to Southern California, while noting this will be his third stint in Los Angeles after taking an entry-level job selling tickets for the Los Angeles Clippers out of college and later coaching the Lakers’ G-League team.

“I don’t think there’s any question that this is like a dream job for us,” he said. “Not just me but my entire family. Both my sons went to the university of San Diego and they grew up in Northern California and the Bay Area. So for us to be in Los Angeles for sure, I mean like i had mentioned earlier, this is our third time living here and that’s super cool and we’re super, super excited about that.”

It’s not as clear why Musselman was so willing to leave a good job at Arkansas, despite coming off his first losing season there (16-17), and he was asked that very question at the end of the formal press conference Friday.

“We worked for an incredible athletic director, Hunter Yurachek, and we were really happy there. I mean, it’s one of the best basketball jobs in the country, there’s no question about that. We’ve had three straight years of being sold out in September, and that building holds 20,000 people in Bud Walton. And obviously, three straight Sweet 16s, minus this year, and two Elite Eights. I mean, it’s a proven program that has won in the past, they won in the past before I got there with Nolan Richardson and Eddie Sutton, and they’re gonna win again, you know, after my time there,” Musselman said.

“But this is an opportunity, the more Jen and I talked … I had great angst. Because, like, ‘Can she hurry up and make a decision?’ Because we really, we believe that with all the things going on, with the USC brand, with going into the Big Ten, that this is really an incredible fit for us as a family, and an incredible fit for USC. I think it’s great all around.”

Not long after Musselman was officially announced as USC’s coach on Thursday, he already had his first roster addition as UMass transfer Josh Cohen, a 6-foot-10 forward, announced he was flipping his commitment from Arkansas to USC.

That’s a start, but Musselman has a lot of work to do.

By the end of Friday, USC’s roster was almost entirely gutted with big man Vincent Iwuchukwu and guard Bronny Jones entering the transfer portal like Kobe Johnson, Oziyah Sellers and Kijani Wright had before them. Boogie Ellis, Joshua Morgan and DJ Rodman were already gone as departing seniors.

With a NBA draft decision still pending from former No. 1 overall recruit and rising sophomore Isaiah Collier, that leaves only veteran rotation forward Harrison Hornery and second-year players Arrinten Page and Brandon Gardner left from Enfield’s squad.

Not to mention all three of USC’s expected incoming recruits had either decommitted (four-star point guard Trent Perry) or asked to be released from their signed National Letters of Intent (four-star forward Brody Kozlowski and four-star shooting guard Liam Campbell).

“We want to get on the phone. I got up at about 5:15 because I knew that there’s obviously a time change back east and I wanted to be able to hit guys on the phone, whether it’s via text, by 8 a.m. But yeah, it’s important for us to get on this as quick as possible,” Musselman said. “You’re juggling staff and you’re trying to relocate and you’ve gotta recruit. Out of all that stuff, the most important thing is recruiting.”

He noted that he planned on meeting with the remaining players later Friday and that he had texted those players plus the previous Trojans’ commits.

“We’re gonna try to communicate with everybody. Today will be a huge day for that, as well. But, just from a time standpoint, we woke up today, came here to prep for this, and we’ll get right into trying to get with our guys as quick as we can today,” he said.

“… I need to try to get a hold of Bronny. I’ve texted him, certainly he’s got a lot of options and we respect those options and we just want him to know that hey, this opportunity there, if you want to play at USC, we’d love to have him, such a talented young man. But again, he’s got a lot of opportunities so it’s just a matter of us connecting and hopefully we’ll do that soon.”

Meanwhile, with multiple Arkansas players entering the transfer portal since his departure (not to mention an unsigned Razorbacks commit from California), it wouldn’t be a surprise if Musselman brings in some of his guys to help move that roster rebuild process along.

“The plan is to try to win as quickly as we can but also do it the right way and so recruiting — your personnel is going to be a big key and we’re a little behind this process, meaning some head coaches that are in place have had a little bit more time on the portal and so we’re going to have to change our conversations with some of the people that we were talking about Arkansas and some of the positives about playing at Arkansas to now talk about playing in the Big Ten and playing at USC,” he said. “So those conversations started happening [Thursday] night and they’ll continue to happen, but certainly, we want to try to win and do it the right way as quick as possible and the only way to do that is to have really good players.”

Go down the Musselman rabbit hole on Twitter and you’ll quickly see what everybody is referring to when mentioning the energy he brings to the job.

“I want our teams to play with intensity but also joy,” Musselman said. “I think you want to be a fierce competitor but you also have to really love what you’re doing so that means as a coach, you want to love what you’re doing and as a player, you want to love coming every day to practice. You want to look forward to the games and so we want our teams to kind of mirror a little bit of who we are as well but then add their own personality.”

As Cohen noted in her opening comments, she is hopeful Musselman can not only galvanize the roster (once it’s assembled, that is) but also the fan base and create a sustained presence in Galen Center that the program has been lacking. Musselman touched on that too.

“I’ve seen the attendance figures at both places. And I hope the people in Arkansas feel like we had a big impact on the attendance growing in Bud Walton [Arena]. And if you look at the numbers before we got there and the numbers of what they were this year, I think we did have an impact on that. I certainly hope that we have a great impact on our attendance here, as well,” he said.

How USC will fare in its transition to the Big Ten is hard to handicap, especially now in a state of transition, but it seems a safe bet that Musselman will infuse some swagger in his Trojans as they look to establish an identity in their new conference.

“I think when you’ve coached in a whole bunch of different leagues, like, going into the Big Ten does not paralyze me. And, looking down the sidelines at guys like Tom Izzo, and guys that are legends, it’s not going to affect me. Because I’ve looked down the sidelines, seen Phil Jackson and Pat Riley,” Musselman said.

Touche.

Building off that, Musselman expects his teams to take on some of his personality in regard to what they bring to the court, as he explained Friday.

“The biggest thing is that our team plays for 90 minutes. I look back at the last nine years that we’ve been involved in college basketball, we’ve had some of the greatest comebacks in the history of college basketball — down 22 and continuing to compete,” he said. “I think it’s going to start in the summer with our guys, them understanding the expectations of playing for 40 minutes whether we’re up, whether we’re down. And then having great belief that regardless of the score, regardless of the time on the clock, a lot that would seem impossible, there’s a lot of ways to win basketball games when the odds are against you.

“So I would say just, we want to play for 40 minutes. And everybody talks about that, but I think if you look at our past history with teams that’s come to truth. And this upcoming season I hope will be no different.”

In regard to offensive style, Musselman said a lot of that will depend on the roster that the Trojans put together, but regardless, USC will be a man-to-man defensive team.

“You’ve got to look at your conference, and you’ve got to try to figure out how you can compete. Obviously, the Big Ten is known in basketball for having physicality, for being a really good rebounding league, for being a very well-coached league that many of the teams have great discipline. So, we need to have a lot of those characteristics,” Musselman said. “And then, maybe, our past teams have been teams that have been very long and very athletic, and teams that have been able to react with great quickness to loose balls. So we want to bring those characteristics as well. And, again, we don’t really have a full roster right now, so only time will tell what style of play we have. But certainly, as I look into what we would like to be, maybe is a little bit different stylistically than many of the Big Ten teams.

“At Nevada, we played a fairly quick style of play, both offensively and defensively. I do know we won’t play any zone defense, regardless of what social media suggests. … We will be a man-to-man defensive team, I do know that for sure, and I think that’s the best way to prepare our players for beyond college, on the basketball floor, is to play that. That’s half the game. And obviously, that’s what happens at the NBA level, it’s what happens at the G-League level, and it’s what happens for the most part in Europe. And so, if any of our players play beyond college, I want to try to prepare them that we best can for their careers.

“So, stylistically, we gotta have some of the Big Ten characteristics, but also we want to be different, so that when we play teams in conference that maybe it’s not a steady diet of what they see every night.”

Musselman said Friday he didn’t have any staff members definitely in place, but he acknowledged it’s likely he’ll bring over some of his Arkansas staff.

“I think right now, everything’s happening so fast that from a staff perspective, I don’t think there’s any doubt that I would really like some continuity staff-wise, so I’m sure there will be some members from Arkansas come,” he said. “How quickly that comes together, I don’t know, but then, like I’ve mentioned, great respect for coach Andy Enfield and what his staff has done and I know some of those guys so I think it’ll just take us probably a week to try to figure out where we go with the staff. …

“We hope to make some things happen as quick as possible, but maybe one or two guys will happen fairly quick and then have a little bit more patience as it goes on.”

One safe bet to join the Trojans is his son, Michael Musselman, who was an assistant coach and director of recruiting for the Razorbacks. In talking to new transfer addition Josh Cohen and how his recruitment played out, it would seem likely Anthony Ruta would be another Arkansas assistant likely to stick with Musselman. But that’s just our read on it.