7. USC
If there’s a coach who has embraced the transfer portal it’s Eric Musselman. His work at Arkansas and even before that at Nevada was inspiring, building fantastic new rosters almost overnight on a regular basis. Unfortunately, his final year with the Razorbacks was a struggle before bolting for USC and having an iffy debut. These kinds of things happen with a roster full of transfers but this class looks even brighter.
The recent news focused on Chad Baker-Mazara, the former Auburn phenom who did brilliant things during a Final Four season. The Trojans also reaped the benefits of a few coaching changes, grabbing great scorers in Rodney Rice out of Maryland (a former Top 75 recruit) and Samford’s Jaden Brownell.
The Trojans added significant size, namely 7-3 center Gabe Dynes from Youngstown State. He could become quite the weapon if coached and developed properly. Three other forwards join the Trojans from this class, with great scoring from Ezra Ausar of Utah, phenomenal numbers for Amarion Dickerson out of Robert Morris, and another young major conference threat in Jacob Cofie, a 6-10 freshman from Seattle who transferred out of Virginia and the ACC.
Again, there’s not time to dive into all the bits and bobs of these new pieces, but USC really hit some home runs with this class. Baker-Mazara and Rice have the talent to take over games and will be fan favorites very quickly for the Trojans. Musselman is no stranger to highly ranked recruiting classes and he really thrived again here.