2025-26 Big Ten basketball season preview: USC Trojans

With the start of college basketball season in early November, Inside the Hall is taking a team-by-team look at the Big Ten and a player-by-player look at IU basketball’s roster over the next two months.

Today, our team previews continue with USC.

Previously: Penn State, Rutgers, Minnesota, Northwestern, Washington, Nebraska, Maryland, Iowa, Wisconsin, Oregon

Veteran coach Eric Musselman is hopeful that season two of his tenure in Los Angeles will turn out much better than his debut last winter.

Musselman overhauled the USC roster before the 2024-25 season and finished 7-13 in the Big Ten with an appearance in the College Basketball Crown tournament. The Trojans completed the season 17-18 overall.

For the second straight year, the Trojans have completed a roster teardown and have a large number of newcomers to integrate in a short period of time. Following the season, the Trojans lost Wesley Yates III and Desmond Claude to the transfer portal, prompting the need for impact backcourt help.

Musselman worked the portal to land two of the more coveted guards in the country in Rodney Rice and Chad Baker-Mazara.

The 6-foot-5 Rice, who began his career at Virginia Tech, is coming off a breakout season at Maryland under Kevin Willard. Rice averaged 13.8 points on a Sweet Sixteen team in College Park and shot 37.4 percent on 3s on nearly six attempts per game. At 6-foot-5, he has excellent size for a combo guard.

Baker-Mazara starred last season at Auburn, which reached the 2025 Final Four under Bruce Pearl. The 6-foot-7 Baker-Mazara, a graduate senior, averaged 12.3 points, three rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.2 steals in 25.6 minutes per game while shooting 38.1 percent on 3s.

The Trojans also added UNC Asheville transfer Jordan Marsh and Dartmouth transfer Ryan Cornish from the portal to solidify the backcourt rotation.

Marsh, a 5-foot-11 junior, stuffed the stat sheet last season. He averaged 18.8 points, 4.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists and two assists and earned Big South newcomer of the year honors. More of a point guard than Rice and Baker-Mazara, Marsh will likely be asked to do more facilitating than scoring for the Trojans.

Cornish, a 6-foot-5 graduate senior, averaged 17.1 points and shot 37.2 percent last season on 3s in the Ivy League.

The Trojans were hoping that five-star signee Alijah Arenas would be a big part of this season’s rotation, but a knee injury is expected to keep him out for most, if not all, of his freshman season.

Freshman Jerry Easter II, a four-star prospect nationally, and graduate transfer EJ Neal from Sacramento State, will provide backcourt and wing depth. The 6-foot-5 Easter, a native of Toledo, Ohio, was the No. 43 player in the final 247Sports Composite rankings for the 2025 class. Neal made 55 3-pointers last season and shot 34.2 percent from distance.

The lone returning piece for the Trojans is graduate senior forward Terrance Williams II, who began his career at Michigan. Williams appeared in just seven games last season at USC before a season-ending wrist injury. Before he got hurt, Williams averaged 10.6 points and 4.6 rebounds in 32 minutes per game.

Up front, USC’s new look rotation will include Utah transfer Ezra Ausar, Virginia transfer Jacob Cofie, Robert Morris transfer Amarion Dickerson, Samford transfer Jaden Brownell and Youngstown State transfer Gabe Dynes.

The 6-foot-9 Ausar, a senior, was the second leading scorer and rebounder last season for the Utes. Ausar averaged 12.5 points and five rebounds and started 31 of the team’s 33 games. He’ll likely get the first shot to the start at the four.

The 6-foot-10 Cofie started half of Virginia’s games last season and averaged a solid 7.2 points, 4.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game. Cofie attempted 41 3-pointers, but connected at just a 24.4-percent clip.

Dickerson is a 6-foot-7 wing who was an All-Horizon League second team pick and the league’s defensive player of the year last season. He averaged 13.3 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.3 blocks and 1.1 steals per game.

The 6-foot-10 Brownell brings size and experience to the new-look Trojan frontcourt. Brownell averaged 14 points and four rebounds last season for the Bulldogs while shooting nearly 40 percent on 3s.

The 7-foot-5 Dynes was on the Horizon League all-defensive team last season and blocked 104 shots, which led the country. While Dynes can’t play a lot of minutes, he’ll be helpful as a rim protector against plenty of Big Ten foes with size.

After a somewhat disappointing debut season at USC for Musselman, the Trojans will look to take a step up in the league standings in year two. Bart Torvik is bullish on that happening as his preseason projections currently have USC inside the top 25 nationally with less than two months until the season begins.

Bottom line: Utilizing transfers was Musselman’s specialty before the transfer portal became what it is today, so the roster turnover shouldn’t be a problem for him to navigate. The Trojans have one of the Big Ten’s better backcourts with Baker-Mazara and Rice and should have more depth than last season, provided they can stay healthy. The expectation should be to compete for an NCAA tournament bid.

Quotable: “I think we have a pretty good idea of who should play (this season). So who gets minutes early on and how they got about it, is kind of a case-by-case, year-by-year deal. It’s just kind of a matter who works well with their teammates and then they’ll play.” – Musselman earlier this month on figuring out a rotation this season.

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