Chad

USC’s decision to dismiss top scorer and three-point shooter Chad Baker-Mazara on the doorstep of the postseason left many wondering Sunday why coach Eric Musselman would willingly sabotage his team’s already-tenuous hopes of making the NCAA tournament.

To Gilbert Arenas, the former NBA star and podcast host whose son, Alijah, is a freshman guard with the Trojans, the move was particularly baffling. So he took to social media Sunday, wearing Baker-Mazara’s No. 4 USC jersey, to share his frustration.

“Right before the tournament? This is what we’re doing?” Arenas said in the video. “Our best player? Mr. I-Get-Buckets? Every night, he brings it every night. Guaranteed 18, 20 every night.”

“When you the best player on the team, whatever you say, you right,” he continued.

LOS ANGELES, CA – DECEMBER 17, 2025: USC Trojans guard Chad Baker-Mazara (4) shoot a foul shot against the UTSA Roadrunners at Galen Center on December 17, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

But the move to part ways with Baker-Mazara was not based on an isolated incident, a person familiar with the decision but not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times, but rather a culmination of a season’s worth of issues that boiled over after the second half of Saturday’s loss to Nebraska.

The Trojans were trailing by three points three minutes into the second half when Baker-Mazara took off in transition after Huskers forward Pryce Sandfort, who was driving for a layup. Baker-Mazara closed the gap and swatted the ball. Then he fell hard on the hardwood.

Baker-Mazara had missed three games last month with a Grade I knee sprain and sat out practices throughout the season with other nagging minor injuries. But after a few seconds lying still on the court, he walked on his own down the Galen Center tunnel toward the USC locker room.

Baker-Mazara emerged from the tunnel a couple minutes later with a noticeable limp. He took a seat in a courtside seat on the baseline, two chairs down from injured guard Rodney Rice.

The sight of Baker-Mazara sitting away from the rest of the team sparked questions after the game, but the seating arrangement wasn’t that unusual for Baker-Mazara, who’d sat there at various times this season. What was odd was how Baker-Mazara handled the rest of the half after he told the USC staff he wasn’t able to resume play.

As USC unraveled without him in the second half, Baker-Mazara was mostly detached from the action. At one point, he went behind the USC bench and chatted with fans in the first row.

The incident on its own could have been innocuous. But at the end of a season filled with similar such moments, patience had worn thin.

By the next morning, Baker-Mazara was no longer with the team.

USC did not disclose the reasons for his departure. But the staff was well aware when they brought in the sixth-year senior last spring that his long history in college hoops was littered with similarly volatile moments. USC was Baker-Mazara’s fifth school in six seasons.

“There will never be a dull moment,” Musselman said in May. “Might be that I’ve got a little more on my plate.”

Baker-Mazara spent his freshman season at Duquesne before transferring to San Diego State. He was named Mountain West as a sophomore, but was kicked off the team by coach Brian Dutcher after he skipped classes, failed tests, missed assignments and fell so far behind on his classes he couldn’t catch up.

Baker-Mazara told the San Diego Union Tribune last spring that it was “a growing-up moment” for him. He assured he’d “learned [his] lesson.”

USC forward Chad Baker-Mazara goes up to dunk under pressure from Indiana forward Sam Alexis at the Galen Center on Feb. 3.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“Some people have to go through it in different ways,” Baker-Mazara told the Union Tribune. “I had to go through it that way. … My parents were both mad. That was weeks of earfuls: ‘Man, what are you doing?’ It was weeks. I had to get my ear chewed off a couple times.”

He ended up at Northwest Florida State, a junior college in Niceville, Fla., before signing with Auburn. At the time, according to the Union Tribune, Dutcher spoke with then-Auburn coach Bruce Pearl on the phone. He told him that Baker-Mazara’s issues weren’t on the court, but that he “just needs to get his life in better order, be more organized, be more on time, do all the little things.”

Pearl and Auburn proved to be a good fit; though, Baker-Mazara earned some ire there, too, after he was ejected in the second half of Auburn’s two-point tournament loss to rival Alabama for elbowing a Tide player in the back of the head. Pearl later defended him on social media.

Pearl, now a college basketball analyst, said Monday in light of Baker-Mazara’s dismissal that the guard was “an incredibly talented kid with a real gift,” but that his “emotions at times have gotten the better of him.”

“He helped us get to the Final Four, we won a league championship with him,” Pearl said during FS1’s Wake Up Barstool on Monday. “On a good day, he would’ve been about the 20th-best player taken in the NBA Draft last year.

“But we all know that Chad has bad days.”

Routinely this season, Baker-Mazara jolted the Trojans’ offense to life. When Rodney Rice went down with a season-ending shoulder injury in November, Baker-Mazara became even more vital to USC’s offense and responded to the call, averaging 26 points per game during the Trojans’ first seven without Rice. Even in his final game against Nebraska, Baker-Mazara scored 14 points in 16 first-half minutes. Against UCLA, he knocked down three consecutive three-pointers. The previous Saturday, he scored 14 straight.

But there were also stretches of the season during which Baker-Mazara’s status remained mysterious He sat out practices ahead of Big Ten play and dealt with what was deemed, at the time, to be a nagging neck injury, only to show up in the Trojans’ lineup against Michigan and Michigan State. He averaged just 20 minutes across both games.

By March, Baker-Mazara’s more volatile moments had started to outweigh his other contributions in the eyes of USC’s staff. Though, with time running out to save their season, how the Trojans plan to replace that production is a question everyone — not just Gilbert Arenas — is asking.

Sixth-year senior guard Chad Baker-Mazara, who spent most of this season as the Trojans top scorer, is no longer with USC’s men’s basketball program, the school announced Sunday.

A person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly said that it wasn’t any one incident, but an accumulation of issues that led to Baker-Mazara’s departure.

Baker-Mazara left Saturday’s loss to Nebraska a few minutes into the second half after he chased down a lay-in and fell hard on the court. USC coach Eric Musselman said after the game that Baker-Mazara told coaches he was unable to return to the game.

After lead guard Rodney Rice was lost for the season in November, Baker-Mazara stepped into the void as the Trojans’ top scorer, averaging 26 points per game over the remaining seven games of USC’s non-conference slate.

Baker-Mazara became less reliable through Big Ten play. Five times during USC’s conference schedule, he has played fewer than 20 minutes in a game, for one reason or another. At times, his health was what held Baker-Mazara back. Other times, it was less clear.

His exit on the doorstep of March is just another ominous sign for the Trojans, who have lost five in a row. USC has two games still remaining in its regular season slate, with a trip to Washington on tap Wednesday and a home tilt with UCLA next weekend.

The Chadian government has launched the 2026 National Humanitarian Response Plan (NHRP) and the Refugee Response Plan (RRP) to coordinate assistance for vulnerable people uprooted by war. Amid a growing refugee crisis, including the arrival of 7,000 new Sudanese refugees at the eastern Oure Cassoni camp, the Chadian authorities established these schemes to tackle the humanitarian crisis overwhelming the country.

At an event held on Feb. 5, in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital city, the coordinator of the initiatives, Francois Batalingaya, commended humanitarian actors for their “constant engagement, which is essential for support to populations confronted by multiple crises”. He stressed the importance of mobilisation at both national and international levels, recognising the contributions of government, technical, financial, and humanitarian partners.

According to Batalingaya, the humanitarian plan is based on an analysis of four major drivers of crisis: conflicts and displacement, food and nutritional insecurity, sanitary emergencies, and climatic shocks. He revealed that 4.5 million people in Chad need assistance, with 3.4 million identified as priority targets, requiring nearly US$1 billion in financing.

He acknowledged persistent challenges, including financial deficits, insecurity, administrative constraints, and the need for stronger national appropriations and leadership. “Faced with these stakes, we must reinforce collective action and increase advocacy in order to avoid certain populations going without assistance,” he said.

The Minister of Social Action, National Solidarity and Humanitarian Affairs, Zara Mahamat Issa, described the launch of the NHRP and RRP as “a key moment for strategic planning and an exercise in accountability towards vulnerable populations.” She noted Chad’s continued solidarity in hosting refugees despite regional security crises, climate change, forced displacement, and socio-economic fragility.

“The government reaffirms its engagement to place the protection of vulnerable populations at the heart of its public action, considering humanitarian response as a factor of stability, social cohesion and sustainable development,” Zara said. She noted that transparency, accountability, and localisation of assistance are priorities, and called for better coordination amid limited resources.

During Batalingaya’s visit to the Oure Cassoni refugee camp, where more than 7,000 Sudanese refugees had recently arrived, he highlighted issues around the humanitarian crisis in Chad. He described the visit as “an immersion into an increasing humanitarian crisis which necessitates immediate responses.”

Testimonies from refugees, community leaders, and aid partners revealed feelings of uncertainty, exhaustion, and a shortage of basic necessities in the refugee camps. “Behind each of these problems are the suspended lives of children lacking access to education and families deprived of shelter,” stated a local humanitarian worker.

The refugees urgently need water, sanitation, healthcare, nutrition, food security, shelter, household items, protection, and education. “Oure Cassoni is an alarm signal. Without rapid and reinforced mobilisation, humanitarian needs would continue to overwhelm response capacities. The urgency is real, and inaction is no longer an option,” Batalingaya warned.