The USC Trojans' inaugural Big Ten basketball season has not been great. After going 8-12 in their final Pac-12 season and finishing eighth in the standings they're currently 6-10 in the Big Ten which has them 14th in Eric Musselman's first year with the school.

After the team lost to Maryland and Rutgers during a Thursday-Sunday road trip, Musselman spoke with the media and basically laid out why it might be silly for teams from the West coast to be playing a Big Ten schedule, suggesting that teams like USC are "in the hole two-four games based on travel."

"UCLA, Washington, Oregon, USC... we're in the hole two-four games based on travel," said Musselman. "And it's going to be that forever for men's basketball. So you've gotta do it, UCLA women and USC women you've gotta have far superior talent in order to survive all this."

UCLA and USC women do appear to have superior talent which is why they're two of the top four teams in the nation right now and have only lost three games combined. It's a curious decision to point out how well those Los Angeles-based college basketball programs are so easily navigating the travel on their first try when you've lost more games this month than those teams have lost all season.

Musselman continued by pointing out how bad the schedule was for the student athletes who would have to do this win or lose.

"We're going to get back roughly at 3 a.m. then we're gonna bus... and then they're gonna go to class at eight," Musselman explained. "And you're not gonna be in your bed even to try and attempt to sleep until 4 a.m. And then you have a class in four hours which means you're gotta to have to get up, you gotta shower, you gotta get to class. You know, should a West coast team be playing a game at 6 o'clock at night? Oh, by the way Ohio State's in Los Angeles and has been there for two days. And they played several hours before us, but yet we're the team that has to travel across country and then our body clocks have to readjust."

As Musselman pointed out, this is how it is forever now. You didn't need to see the travel itineraries to know this wasn't going to be ideal for the college kids, but that clearly wasn't part of the equation when USC agreed to participate. Now it's time for Musselman to deal with it or the school will try to find someone else who can.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Eric Musselman Explains Why West Coast Teams in Big Ten Might Have Been a Bad Idea.