On Monday, the same day the women’s basketball transfer portal opened, I saw a post on X about USC women’s basketball gaining traction. The post suggested that the Trojans entering the portal were “key” losses, prompting a flood of comments arguing the opposite.

While I largely disagree with the sentiment that these losses mean nothing — junior guard Malia Samuels, for example, started over half of USC’s games and would’ve likely had at least some role next season — the Trojans didn’t lose junior guard JuJu Watkins, nor freshman guard Jazzy Davidson. If that happens, feel free to clown me, again, Bennett Christofferson.

In fact, three of the names mentioned in the post — junior forward Gerda Raulušaityte, junior forward Yakiya Milton and sophomore forward Dayana Mendes — were a part of the by-committee forward group that really held USC back during its middling 2025-26 campaign. Sophomore forward Vivian Iwuchukwu’s portal announcement later in the week just added to the trend, though for my dollar, she performed slightly better than the rest of the outgoing forward group.

I would assume that’s at least part of the reason USC went out and recruited two 6-foot-2-plus forwards and a 6-foot-4 center — all five-stars, by the way — and also part of the reason why most of the Trojan frontcourt skedaddled into the portal.

It’s the nature of the transfer portal era, you’d think. Except, in some ways, it’s quite the opposite. 

Around the time of March Madness, it is pretty typical to see charts of where teams’ starters began their college careers and be unable to identify which school is being shown, let alone the red logo you’ve never seen before in the point guard spot. 

But, at USC, a lot of the depth is leaving, and, instead of going to the portal for a quick, established fix, the Trojans are taking a more old-school approach. One I think will work.

They’re focusing on recruiting.

That’s not to say that Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb and company won’t pick anyone up in the portal. I find that hard to believe.

But the strategy of building from within through years of consistent recruiting is one I wholeheartedly support. Look at UCLA’s senior-dominated, tight-knit team this season, and it’s easy to see why USC’s projected roster was the No. 1 team in USA Today’s recent preseason rankings.

Watkins is back. Davidson and sophomore guard Kennedy Smith have developed in the program and are already stars. Redshirt freshman forward Laura Williams finished last year strong. Saniyah Hall, Sitaya Fagan and Sara Okeke — the three incoming recruits — are all going to make an impact next season.

Building culture is mission-critical, especially when anyone with a big donor, let alone a massive funding base, can wave money in front of your players and tempt them away. The players have to not only want to come to your school, but actively choose to stay year after year, or else you lose nine of your players to the portal like Iowa State.

If the focus is placed too much on the next year rather than the program’s long-term outlook, the team will become a revolving door of players — and suffer as a result, especially if a thing or two goes wrong during the season.

On the other side of USC basketball, Head Coach Eric Musselman’s group only retained one player between 2024-25 and 2025-26 — Terrance Williams II, who played the seventh most minutes last season. The two recruits — star freshman guard Alijah Arenas and freshman defensive-specialist Jerry Easter II — are either expected to leave the program or have already left.

Before sustaining a knee injury in the offseason, Arenas was projected to declare for the NBA Draft. Now, his status is up in the air, but I would predict he enters the portal after his father, former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, felt comfortable enough to call the Chad Baker-Mazara-less Trojans a “junior varsity-ass team” in a social media post in March. Easter already declared his intent to enter the portal.

On the other hand, some of Musselman’s portal additions worked out. Senior forward Ezra Ausar, sophomore forward Jacob Cofie and junior guard Rodney Rice stood out. Others, like junior center Gabe Dynes and graduate guard Ryan Cornish, felt a bit tacked on and didn’t get their time to shine. In an extreme case, Baker-Mazara, on his fifth collegiate program, was dismissed from the team, reportedly due to an “accumulation of issues.”

That portal-heavy experiment didn’t work for the Trojan men that went 7-13 in Big Ten play. Now, in a similar vein to the women, they’ve hit the recruiting trail hard.

While landing Arenas last year was a massive victory, showing what a turned-around program under Musselman can accomplish, this year’s recruiting class has restored a lot of the faith I lost in the program around the end of the season.

Musselman has three 97-or-higher-rated prospects coming in — the 6-foot-11 Ratliff twins and five-star forward Christian Collins. Though the men’s market will always be harder to predict due to the NBA allowing players to declare for the draft at 19 — typically after one year of collegiate play — to the WNBA’s 22 — usually four years — recruiting is just as important.

After down seasons for both programs from a results perspective, and many placing Musselman firmly on the hot seat due to not having an NCAA Tournament appearance in two seasons at USC, this focus on culture development and recruiting should at least give optimism for the time being.

So, no, I’m not worried about both teams’ transfer portal losses, even with over a week still left for chaos to ensue.

“Roots Before Branches,” right? They sang that on Glee once, so it must be true.

Sean Campbell is a sophomore writing about all facets of USC sports in a voice- and reference-heavy style in his column, “A Wannabe Sports Writer,” which runs every other Friday. He is also an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan.