HC Eric Musselman Reveals Heroic Effort from Injured Alijah Arenas for USC
Southern California Trojans head coach Eric Musselman and guard Alijah Arenas. © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images 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.