New USC basketball coach Eric Musselman had barely landed in Los Angeles with his family Thursday night and he already had his first Trojans recruit on board.
Josh Cohen, a 6-foot-10 graduate transfer from UMass, had committed to Musselman at Arkansas and flipped that commitment to USC after Musselman was officially announced as the Trojans' coach.
Cohen averaged 15.9 points and 6.8 rebounds per game in his lone season at UMass after Saint Francis (Pennsylvania), where he averaged a career-best 21.8 points and 8.3 rebounds the previous season.
Cohen scored 25 or more points in five games last season for UMass and has shot better than 60 percent from the field (61.1 last season) all four years of his college basketball career.
Musselman has a major rebuilding task on his hands in assembling his first USC roster.
The bulk of the 2023-24 roster is already gone via graduation (Boogie Ellis, DJ Rodman and Joshua Morgan), the transfer portal (Kobe Johnson, Oziyah Sellers and Kijani Wright), and with Collier potentially entering the NBA draft after one season and a decision yet to come from Bronny James on his future.
That would leave center Vincent Iwuchukwu (5.5 points per game, 15.7 minutes per game) and forward Harrison Hornery (3.3 PPG in 13.8 MPG) as the lone rotation players back along with second-year players Arrinten Page and Brandon Gardner -- and there's no guarantee they all return either.
USC has also seen two of its 2024 recruits decommit since Enfield's departure in local four-star point guard Trent Perry and four-star guard Liam Campbell, out of Idaho, who requested a release from his National Letter of Intent, leaving just four-star forward Brody Kozlowski, who has already signed his NLI.
It's possible Musselman has some other familiar players in mind to fill out the roster, as Arkansas guard Khalif Battle (14.8 PPG) and forward Baye Fall (limited playing time) both entered the transfer portal Thursday. Musselman also held a commitment at Arkansas from four-star 2024 guard Isaiah Elohim, out of Chatsworth, California.
