Rick Majerus was just starting to get good at his new job. If you watched ESPN’s telecast of the Temple vs. Wake Forest game on Monday, that much was evident. There was Majerus, the longtime Utah coach and admitted basketball junkie, providing uncanny insight, holding his own in the humorous banter department with guest Bill Cosby, and looking like he could make a go of a career away from the sidelines.

If only he would have smiled on camera. That’s something ESPN producers don’t have to worry about any more. On Wednesday, as had been rumored since USC fired former coach Henry Bibby last week, Majerus gave in to his longing for the sidelines and agreed to a long-term deal to coach the Trojans. That’s good for the game, and great for USC.

Majerus’s decision is one of the major stories of the season, and also the least surprising. Good as he was becoming as a TV analyst, he was never going to be content calling games. His pregame preparation was a big tip off.

“When I did TV and went to Wake Forest for example, all I did was talk about Xs and Os and basketball,” Majerus said. “They laughed at me when I came to my first game with 38 pages of notes. I had looked at all of this tape. The guy said, ‘You don’t have to win the game for both teams, you just have to talk about it.'”

Majerus inherits a program torn asunder by Bibby, who was surly on his best days and hard to live with on his worst. One player left the program this season and several others were reportedly unhappy before USC athletic director Mike Garrett made the decision to can Bibby. Former Bibby assistant Jim Saia will coach the rest of the season.

In the meantime, Majerus, who had to resign from ESPN, will technically be listed as the Trojans’ third assistant so he can recruit. He’ll have to get busy – USC loses six seniors after this season. Majerus will focus on a front line that will soon be without starting post players Rory O’Neill and Jeff McMillan and key reserves Nick Curtis and Gregg Guenther.

Provided he can sign some post players, Majerus’s coaching philosophy should quickly allow USC to become competitive. It all starts with effort on defense – in Majerus’s first 14 years at Utah, the Utes ranked in the Division I top 30 eleven times in scoring defense, nine times in rebound margin, and eight times in field-goal percentage defense. Shooting touches come and go, but Utah was always competitive because it expended energy on defense and rebounding.

Offensively, Majerus’s teams are usually efficient because of an emphasis on execution. Utah was typically among the nation’s leaders in field-goal percentage. Majerus has never had a losing record and averaged 21 wins a season in a career that began in 1987 at Ball State.

Majerus, who left Utah because of heart problems but has been given a clean bill of health, will join the Pac-10 at a propitious time. Arizona coach Lute Olson is 70 and surely won’t stay around much longer to coach the program that has dominated the league for years. Stanford lost coach Mike Montgomery to the NBA after last season and seems to be having a tough adjustment period under replacement Trent Johnson.

USC’s biggest future rival will be a familiar one – UCLA is seemingly back on track under former Pittsburgh coach Ben Howland. Majerus and Howland are old friends who don’t speak much any more, and former Utah assistant Donny Daniels is on Howland’s staff. That could add some spice to the rivalry once Majerus takes his rightful place on the bench.

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TURMOIL IN MEMPHIS Memphis coach John Calipari deserves credit for making a tough decision earlier this week. Though his team has struggled to a 5-4 record after beginning the season ranked in the Top 25,Calipari suspended star forward Sean Banks indefinitely. Banks apparently didn’t want to be coached, so Calipari gave him his wish.

Banks hadn’t committed any major transgressions, Calipari told the Memphis press, but several months worth of diva-like behavior got to be a bit much. Calipari’s critics say the coach should have expected trouble from Banks, who was arrested three times in high school. Calipari answers by recalling his history with former Memphis point guard Antonio Burks, who had issues of his own that Calipari handled, and currently plays for the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies.

Calipari now has to decide whether suspending Banks will turn out to be addition by subtraction. Banks and freshman point guard Darius Washington apparently struggled to find chemistry on the court, even though they shared an apartment off it. And the emergence of Rodney Carney as the Tigers’ go-to scorer reportedly didn’t sit well with Banks, who seemed content to fire up perimeter shots and resisted his coaches’ urging to try and do damage in the paint.

If Banks doesn’t return, the undermanned Tigers, already thin after the loss of guards Jeremy Hunt and Clyde Wade to surgery, will have to rein in their offense, take higher percentage shots, and place an even greater emphasis on half court defense. Given Banks’s unwillingness to fit in, that might be their most desirable alternative.

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CORPUS CHRISTI MIRACLE This week’s sign of parity in college basketball: Collegiate Basketball News, which produces the most accurate reproduction of the NCAA’s Ratings Percentage Index, released its first report of the season, and Texas A &M was ranked 22nd.That’sTexas A &M as in Corpus Christi, not College Station.

Texas A&M-CC has been playing basketball for a mere 10 years and toils in college basketball purgatory as an independent. This season, however, the team is 6-1 and has beaten Florida State, TCU, Old Dominion, and Baylor. The wins over Baylor and Florida State were on the road.

How have the Islanders done it? The same way an increasing number of mid-major schools are winning: with experienced outside shooters. Veteran coach Ron Arrow has 17 players on his roster, and 11 of them are junior or seniors. Experience is a luxury upper-major schools are increasingly doing without in an era where the NBA is taking high school players and underclassmen at an alarming rate. Similarly, the exodus of talented big men to the NBA has heralded the emergence of the three-pointer as college basketball’s great equalizer, and the Islanders are shooting 42% from three-point range.

Those factors have allowed Texas A&M-CC and other mid-major schools to become a major pain in the backside for the upper majors, this season more than ever.

Mr. Dortch is the editor in chief of the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.