What a week for USC men’s basketball.

The Trojans (13-8, 5-5 Big Ten) have had a volatile season up to this point, earning two ranked wins while simultaneously suffering three double-digit losses in conference play and five such losses overall.

This isn’t a complete surprise, given how much new terrain USC is navigating this season. The Trojans are in their first season in the Big Ten. Head Coach Eric Musselman is in his opening year in Los Angeles. Every player in the rotation for USC’s upset win over Michigan State, starter or bench, is in their first season with the team.

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While the inconsistency is no surprise, there are signs USC is building toward a resurgence. However, this is far from a guarantee. The easiest way to achieve stability is to have little roster turnover, which is not going to happen for USC.

The Trojans currently have 10 senior or graduate players on their roster and will likely lose most if not all of them heading into next year. Three of those players — senior forward Saint Thomas, graduate guard Chibuzo Agbo and graduate forward Josh Cohen — have started at least 18 of USC’s 21 games this season, meaning they’re not just bottom-of-the-bench players.

The silver lining is that USC is slated to bring in one of the top recruiting classes in the country, decreasing the severity of the roster losses. 

The gem of the class is guard Alijah Arenas, the No. 7 recruit and highest-rated shooting guard in the class according to the 247Sports composite rankings. Arenas, the son of former NBA player Gil Arenas, is joined by two four-star recruits — guards Jerry Easter and Elzie Harrington — who are both top-65 players in the class to give USC the No. 7 class in the country.

A freshman’s high rating certainly does not mean they will be instant starters when they step foot on campus, though. Freshman forward Jalen Shelley and freshman wing Isaiah Elohim were top-65 players in last year’s class but have combined to average 9.7 minutes per game.

Alijah Arenas is a different beast given his five-star status, but the Trojans cannot necessarily expect him to lead them to the NCAA Tournament in his first, and maybe only, year on campus. 

Rutgers (11-11, 4-7) has exemplified that this season, bringing in the No. 2 and No. 3 players in the 2024 cycle in freshman guard and forward Ace Bailey and freshman guard Dylan Harper. 

The main problem for Rutgers, beyond an admittedly stiff schedule, is that Bailey and Harper are the only players who average more than 8 points per game for the Scarlet Knights. In addition to the star freshmen, Rutgers brought in junior guard Jordan Derkack, a four-star transfer from Merrimack College. Derkack is the team’s third-leading scorer, with 7.3 points per game.

In a way, the Scarlet Knights are having similar consistency issues to the Trojans since their three leading scorers are all newcomers to the squad.

That is not to say freshmen can’t be part of elite squads. The only player above Bailey and Harper in the 2024 recruiting cycle is Duke’s freshman wing Cooper Flagg. The Blue Devils, who currently sit at 19-2 with a perfect 11-0 record in the ACC, are a basketball blue blood and are, therefore, an entirely different beast — they brought in five five-star freshmen for this season — but the Trojans can still use them as a blueprint.

Only six players have started a game for Duke this season. While three of those players are five-star freshmen, the other three are veterans who add experience to the floor amid the inexperience of Flagg and his fellow first years. The Trojans have the veterans this season but not the young, inexperienced talent like Bailey, Harper or Flagg.

USC does not yet have the recruiting pull of Duke, but the Trojans also don’t need to be 19-2 through 21 games to crack the NCAA Tournament field either. It is hard to tell whether USC will make March Madness this season — ESPN’s bracketology currently has Musselman’s squad on the bubble — but if the Trojans follow Duke’s model of surrounding talented freshmen with strong veterans, they have a good shot to be a strong team in the Dance next season.

While Thomas, Agbo and Cohen are likely leaving after this season, key starters still have eligibility to come back to Galen Center next season. Junior guard Desmond Claude and redshirt freshman guard Wesley Yates III, who are two of USC’s three top scorers in terms of points per game, have the chance to return, barring a decision by either of them to enter the transfer portal or declare for the NBA Draft.

Yates III and Claude can be USC’s veterans, surrounded by the likes of young talent in Alijah Arenas and soon-to-be sophomores Shelley and Elohim. 

Even though the Trojans would prefer not to be sitting with a .500 record in conference play, touting a 35-point loss earlier in a nonconference game, Musselman has laid the building blocks for a successful program at USC in only his first year at the helm.

There have been many positive firsts among the flurry of firsts this season. The Trojans’ win over Illinois (15-7, 7-5) was their first ranked road win since 2010. USC’s win over the Spartans will always represent Musselman’s first victory over a top-10 opponent with the Trojans.

This year is the season of firsts. But hold onto your seats, Trojan fans. The Muss Bus has only just started rolling.

Thomas Johnson is a senior writing about USC’s arrival to a new conference and all of the implications surrounding the entrance in his column, “Big Ten Bites,” which runs every other Wednesday.