LOS ANGELES — For nine years, unless he got a chance to catch his late father Bill’s Minnesota Golden Gophers, Eric Musselman hardly ever watched a game of Big Ten basketball.
He was in the Mountain West, far removed from the Midwest, for four years at Nevada. He was in Fayetteville, headspace wrapped up in the SEC, for five years at Arkansas. It wasn’t until this spring, shortly after Musselman hit it off with athletic director Jen Cohen in an initial interview for USC’s head-coaching job, that he flipped on some tape of his future program’s new conference.
Every day, following that initial conversation, Musselman watched five to 10 minutes of tape on every single team in the Big Ten. In practices across the months to come, long before conference play dawned, USC’s first-year head coach has referenced a specific name and face while barking feedback. Press-break drills haven’t just been about breaking a press; they’ve been about breaking Penn State’s press. Box-out drills haven’t just been about boxing out; they’ve been about boxing out Michigan, a team with a pair of seven-footers in the frontcourt.
He’s needed, simply, to get everyone up to speed. USC has two people in its program with any modicum of Big Ten experience: sport administrator Paul Perrier, who spent four years at Rutgers, and forward Terrance Williams II, a Michigan transfer who’s out with a back injury. Musselman’s staff largely knows the SEC. His roster is sewn together from mid-major transfers. His freshmen originally committed to play for him at Arkansas.
“A completely and utterly different league,” Musselman told the Southern California News Group on Thursday night, describing his move to the Big Ten from the SEC. “I mean, I can’t think of two more contrasting conferences.”
With that, then – would he change at all, as a coach, at USC?
“I don’t think so,” Musselman said.
He admitted, readily, that he didn’t know if his staff didn’t quite have the personnel “to do exactly what we’ve done in the past,” given the haste in which they were forced to throw together a roster in their first year at USC. But as the Trojans’ nonconference slate has come to a close, the coming months will provide the first trial of a fascinating experiment if Musselman’s philosophy – favoring slashing guards and a heavy dosage of free throws and small-ball defensive switches – will play in a Big Ten loaded with behemoths.
First up is Michigan (10-3, 2-0 Big Ten) on Saturday, featuring 7-foot-1 starters Vladislav Goldin and 7-foot-0 junior Danny Wolf. Then comes USC’s first conference road matchup, at packed-out Indiana (11-3, 2-1), with 7-foot Arizona transfer center Oumar Ballo. The following weekend, a trip to No. 22 Illinois (10-3, 2-1), brings 7-foot-1 Croatian freshman Tomislav Ivisic (14.2 points a game, 9.2 rebounds).
USC, by the way, doesn’t have a single player above 6-foot-10 and has two true centers on the roster: Josh Cohen and 6-foot-8 Rashaun Agee.
After the wheels threatened to snap off a month ago, though, Musselman’s vision has materialized nicely across a four-game win streak to close nonconference play. Xavier transfer Desmond Claude has rounded into one of the better point guards in the country, averaging 18.3 points a game and 5.3 assists on 63% shooting in USC’s last four. Chibuzo Agbo Jr., a 6-foot-7 wing, has caught fire from deep, shooting 52% from three in that frame. He and forward Saint Thomas’ defensive versatility has proved key in containing bigs like Washington’s Great Osobor (9 points, 4-of-11 shooting in a Dec. 7 USC win). And the injection of electric freshman guard Wesley Yates Jr. in USC’s starting lineup over the last four, too, “changed our quickness,” as Musselman put it.
His program, Musselman said after a mid-December win over CSUN, didn’t quite grasp the sheer pace they needed to play with at the start of their season. That’s been learned, convincingly, as USC (9-4, 1-1 Big Ten) dives into conference play. But pace alone likely won’t be enough by itself to outgun a slew of Midwest powers.
“We’ll have to see whether we go small, or – that won’t happen, we’ll go traditional, and see how that works,” Musselman said of USC’s handling of Michigan’s bigs. “And then, at some point, we’ve got to be ready to make some adjustments.”
Michigan at USC
When: 5 p.m. Saturday
Where: Galen Center
TV/radio: FOX (Ch. 11)/ESPN LA 710
USC at Indiana
When: 4 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, Bloomington, Ind.
TV/radio: Big Ten Network/USCTrojans.com