"It’s hard to raise money anyway": USC HC Eric Musselman lauds NIL backing for easing transition and roster revamp

Eric Musselman took over as the USC Trojans' head coach in April following Andy Enfield's exit. The team had lost most of its players, including Isaiah Collier, Boogie Ellis, DJ Rodman and Bronny James. Thus, Musselman and his staff were tasked with rebuilding the roster from the ground up.

During a media availability at practice, coach Musselman talked about the donors who have shown their support via monetary backing through NIL, which helped speed up the recruitment process.

“The support here has been phenomenal,” said Musselman (via On3). “No complaints at all from any of us at all other than just being super appreciative because it’s hard to raise money, anyway.”

Musselman also spoke about the criteria that he and his staff were looking for when recruiting.

“For us, we try to start with high quality, high character guys,” he said. “At USC, there’s the academic piece as well. Our pool of recruits is different than maybe other places that I’ve been. So I think that that is an added piece to the recruiting process here.”

The Trojans are ranked 12th on On3's team rankings for transfers, having brought in 11 players after losing seven. Some players who transferred in include Wesley Yates, Kevin Patton Jr., Desmond Claude, Terrance Williams, Saint Thomas and more.

Eric Musselman discussed how his staff lived in a 'portal house' for the first month

Eric Musselman's staff hiring process was quite quick, and he said that there was not much time to move entire families to Southern California. So they came up with a solution.

“You know, probably the smartest thing we did is we rented a house for the first month in Manhattan Beach with our whole staff,” Musselman said (via On3). “Stayed in it, guys were in bunk beds, and we called it the Portal House. I mean Michael (Musselman) and (Anthony) Ruta were in bunk beds. This wasn’t a frat house, but it was a Portal House.

“We literally — it’d be like midnight and I’d say ‘Hey, what about that guy from so and so college?’ It’d be like 12:30 at night and Coach Conroy stayed in. It was pretty fun. Just crushing Bowling Green tape at like 2:00 a.m., eating every meal together. None of us cooked, so we ate out every single meal for a full 30 days.”

However, staying like this meant being away from their family and spending less time with them, even on the phone. Regarding this, the coach said:

“Ruta was the first out of there, man. I mean, he found a place and he was out. No furniture, nothing, like, ‘I’ve had enough. I can’t.’ ”

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