HC Eric Musselman Reveals Heroic Effort from Injured Alijah Arenas for USC
Alijah Arenas, a consensus five-star recruit, committed to the USC Trojans last year over offers from Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisville. The son of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas was expected to dominate college basketball.
Unfortunately, 2025 wasn’t a good year for Arenas. He was involved in a serious car crash in April. Arenas had to be hospitalized and placed on an induced coma. He did not suffer any broken bones in the crash.
Three months later, Arenas suffered a torn meniscus that required surgery. That pushed his USC debut, and he finally played for the Trojans in January 2026. His head coach, Eric Musselman, recently revealed that those weren’t the only problems he had to deal with.
Musselman said that Arenas played through an ankle injury to help his team in the final stretch of the season. The 19-year-old is still nursing the ankle injury.
“One thing that has not been reported you guys is that Alijah got hurt with about three games to go in our season and had a really really bad ankle sprain,” he said. “He rehabbed it religiously, he played on it. To this day, he’s still not going live and is still rehabbing an ankle that he played on for the betterment of the team.”
“So, we’ve been not playing for how long it’s been, and he’s still rehabbing that ankle. He played on an ankle that not many would play on.”
Coach said that all the injuries and setbacks Arenas suffered in 2025 would’ve been too much to come back from so quickly for most players. In his opinion, most players wouldn’t even make their season debut when there’s only a handful of games left to play.
But the mentality that Arenas has and how he managed to push himself through everything is going to help him this year.
Eric Musselman on What Joshua Hughes Brings to USC
While Arenas is going to be one of his star players this year, Musselman will need a complete unit to turn things around for the USC Trojans. He has made some good additions to the team, adding strength to the Trojans roster.
Musselman recently welcomed one of his most underrated transfer pickups, Joshua Hughes.
“We are excited to welcome Josh Hughes to our Trojan family,” he said. “Josh provides us with tremendous leadership and experience. With Josh’s size and shooting, he provided our USC team with great versatility. Josh will be a great addition to our program, and we cannot wait to coach Josh.”
This will be Musselman’s third season as the USC head coach.
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