LOS ANGELES — Dangling over the railing by the home tunnel, waiting for Eric Musselman’s mid-major mishmash of a roster to emerge, was the only family at the Galen Center on Monday night who had bothered to bring a team photo for autographs.
USC season-ticket holder Arin Keshishian and his young sons started doing this last season, when Andy Enfield was leading the program. Before the Trojans’ season opener, Keshishian printed out a couple of photos from the team’s Facebook post of the group at the Venice Beach basketball courts. His sons stuck them through the banister on Monday, hoping to draw the attention of anyone in a cardinal-and-gold jersey who strolled past.
But a problem emerged. Keshishian furrowed his brows and scrolled on his phone, peering at a list of unrecognizable names.
“We don’t know,” Keshishian said, “who any of the players are.”
In the hours to come, a completely new-look USC program started to put itself on the map in a 77-51 season-opening victory over Chattanooga. This was the start of a new era, with just two familiar faces on the roster – senior Harrison Hornery and walk-on JD Plough – from Enfield’s old guard. And the number of empty red-cushioned seats on a sleepy Monday night, certainly, far outweighed those that were filled.
But Musselman, who transformed empty arenas into packed nightly sellouts during his time at Nevada and Arkansas, had done this before. The first step was to win. And his patchwork first-year roster, featuring 10 transfers, asserted themselves just fine.
They finished with 21 assists against just nine turnovers, showing remarkably controlled chemistry for a group that had largely known each other for all of six months, as a host of veterans chipped into a balanced scoring effort. Boise State transfer sharpshooter Chibuzo Agbo Jr. led the way with 14 points, Yale glue-guy transfer Matt Knowling added 13, and Washington sophomore transfer Wesley Yates III both confounded and delighted with nine points and three assists.
There was little of the pomp-and-circumstance, on Monday, that Musselman has become so well-known for across his college career. There was no juggling. No Harlem Globetrotters warm-up. There were a few hundred fans, maybe, and a cardinal-red strobe light in USC’s home tunnel, and a slickly edited pregame hype video that featured a real-life Muss Bus – no, seriously, a renovated school bus – on the JumboTron.
There was simple veteran grit, instead. Musselman had said the world should expect this USC team to play like “sewer rats,” and they dragged Chattanooga through the muck, forcing two shot-clock violations within the first nine minutes and rotating with discipline against a Mocs team that often over-rotated the ball on the perimeter.
An array of lengthy, versatile defenders held the visitors to 30% shooting in the first half, and Yates provided USC with a late spark before the halftime buzzer – albeit not before turning Musselman’s hair a little greyer. With less than a minute to go, Yates tried to force a pass to the elbow that was unceremoniously picked, the notoriously fiery Musselman so incensed he leaped in frustration.
On the next possession, Yates calmly drained a turnaround jumper with a veteran’s footwork, and USC held a 10-point halftime lead.
Knowling, a Yale transfer who seems to have an innate sense for being in the right place at the right time, made his presence felt in the second half with a variety of soft-touch finishes and pretty dump-offs. Agbo hit three second-half 3-pointers, Bowling Green transfer big Rashaun Agee contributed a beauty of an up-and-under and a tomahawk dunk that lit up the arena, and these newly acquitted Trojans walked back through the tunnel and past the Keshishians with the first win of Musselman’s tenure.
More to come on this story.