The No. 12 ranked USC men’s volleyball team takes on the pride of the Ivy League Thursday night when they play the Harvard Crimson at Galen Center. 

USC is 2-0 to start the season following a pair of wins in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament this past weekend, both 3-0 sweeps of Fort Valley State Friday and Morehouse Saturday. The two matches were at Galen Athletic Pavilion and were closed to the public. 

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The Trojans’ matchup with Harvard will be their official home opener, as it will be on the Galen Center main floor and open to fans. This marks a drastically different beginning to the season than last year, when nineeight of USC’s first 10 matches were on the road. The Trojans hope opening the season on friendly grounds will help them get into a more established groove. 

“We’re used to one, maybe two January home games, and that was enough of that,” USC Head Coach Jeff Nygaard said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “We’re ‘SC, we wanna be at home. We’ve got a great facility; we’ve got a great fanbase; we’ve got great parents; we’ve got a great community. We wanna play in front of them.” 

The Trojans’ roster underwent a complete change in the offseason. The team lost five regular starters, and only one true senior is on the team this season. 

Luckily for USC, that senior is Kyle Paulson, a star middle blocker who is ready to take on a greater leadership role for the Trojans this season. 

“[I’m] just trying to take accountability for as much as I can, trying to help these younger guys in any way that I can,” Paulson said. 

Nygaard believes that Paulson’s confidence in his leadership ability is warranted.

“[Redshirt junior outside hitter] Jack Deuchar and Kyle Paulson, two of our senior guys, have done a great job of using their voice and their leadership,” Nygaard said. “They’re the guys who go into the locker room and are able to constructively get things going the right way.”

Another standout for the Trojans is sophomore outside hitter Dillon Klein. Klein, the No. 1 ranked high school volleyball player in the class of 2022, was a star for the Trojans last season. He earned All-Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Second Team honors, All-MPSF freshman team honors and American Volleyball Coaches Association All-American honorable mention. 

Klein is hungry to lead USC to a much better record this season, and Nygaard knows he can rely on Klein in big moments. 

“He’s already a guy that we can really depend on as a passer, as a blocker, and as an attacker,” Nygaard said. “He’s made monster gains in his decision making as an attacker too.” 

Around those two guys, the team looks a lot different. But, Klein is confident it will be clear to Trojan fans that the team has worked to make sure the changes to the team were positive ones once they see them play Thursday. 

“I’d expect a little bit more of a dynamic offense,” Klein said. “Last year we were a bit all over the place, almost scrambling to get kills. We’re gonna be in system a lot more, we got good passers this year, and we got real good middles this year.”

One of the most high-profile changes to the Trojans’ roster was the signing of 6-foot-11-inch freshman middle blocker Wes Smith — the No. 1 ranked high school player in the class of 2023. Smith has been impressing his team beyond what they could have imagined. 

“You’re going to see [Smith] do some stuff as a freshman that’s like oh wow, that’s special,” Nygaard said. 

It’s been impressive even to his fellow middle blocker Paulson. 

“He has a lot of potential, and I think he’s going to be a really big piece for us this year,” Paulson said. 

USC fans can get their first look at Smith and the rest of the new-look Trojans versus Harvard Thursday at 7 p.m. at Galen Center.