A COACH FROM DAY ONE

Musselman was called early as he formed bond with 'brothers'

- BY RYAN KARTJE

ERIC MUSSELMAN took to coaching in the mid-1980s while still a player at the University of San Diego, where he formed a strong bond with teammates.

When they first met more than four decades ago now, the four freshmen on the University of San Diego's men's basketball team in 1983 didn't need long to figure out who would lead them.

Eric Musselman had all but elected himself within moments of moving into their dorm room.

"Before I could even drop my bag on the bed, Eric goes, 'OK, we're going to the gym,'" recalled Scott Thompson, San Diego's 7-foot center. "He'd barely said hello." It didn't matter that, at 5foot-7, Musselman - the future USC men's basketball coach was more than a foot shorter than his freshman counterparts, with the other two checking in at 6-foot-11 and 6-foot-9. Or that Musselman carried himself with a swagger and confidence more befitting, even then, of a coach than a college freshman. He was so sure of himself, he actually pitched himself for the head coaching job as a sophomore.

"Father [Pat] Cahill was our athletic director," Musselman said. "So before they named our new coach [in 1984], I went in there and told him, 'Hey I think I can coach these guys and be a student athlete and a coach, and it'd be great publicity, the first time ever and all that." "And Father Cahill told me to get back to class." This week, Musselman finally got the chance to walk the San Diego sideline as coach-albeit for the opposing team, when his Trojans beat the Toreros on Tuesday night. But in the 40 years since they left San Diego, Musselman has never strayed far from the teammates who spent almost every waking moment with him in college. They still communicate most every day via group text messages, in part to keep tabs on Musselman and the Trojans.