Another wayward college basketball coach is apparently coming back where he belongs.

Success in college doesn’t necessarily guarantee success in the NBA, and Tim Floyd – widely reported to be USC’s choice as its next coach – is Exhibit A. Floyd coached his teams at New Orleans and Iowa State to nine 20-win seasons before taking over the post-Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls. Did the money cloud Floyd’s thinking when he decided to accept such a difficult task? Probably. Ego likely played a part, too. Floyd was 49-190 in his stint with Chicago and soon found himself unpopular and unemployed. He later took over the New Orleans Hornets, but was fired after last season’s lackluster 41-41 record.

While Floyd could no doubt squeeze by on the $1.5 million settlement the Hornets paid him not to work, no coach wants to leave a job knowing he couldn’t get it done.

Floyd is far from the only college coach to realize his act didn’t play in the NBA. Rick Pitino, a celebrity in the college ranks after leading Kentucky’s program back to prominence in the ’90s, resisted the overtures of NBA teams until the Boston Celtics came calling. It seemed like a good fit, but Pitino, admitting he wasn’t the man for the job, resigned after several seasons of mediocre records and personnel upheaval.

There are others, including John Calipari (UMass), Lon Kruger (Illinois), and P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), who took ill-advised shots at the NBA and found their skills lacking. Stanford coach Mike Montgomery, architect of one of the country’s top programs, surprised some people after last season by jumping to the Golden State Warriors. The odds of his achieving success in the NBA are not good.

There are at least two reasons for this. College coaches are teachers, first and foremost, and their players want to be taught. If there’s a failure to communicate, players transfer. NBA players, considerably more skilled than their college counterparts, don’t need as much teaching, nor do they respond to micromanaging (something Pitino was accused of in Boston). If there’s a failure to communicate, it’s easier to jettison a coach who’s making a million a year than a star player whose paycheck exceeds the gross national product of a Third-World country.

Some coaches simply set themselves up for failure, taking over stagnant franchises. What was Kruger thinking when he left Illinois, a top-10 program, for the Atlanta Hawks, a team mired in mediocrity?

Some might say that college coaches who jump to the NBA have nothing to lose, that if their shot fizzles, they can always find solace in multimillion dollar settlements and another college job. While that’s been true in many cases, there’s another line of thinking that Pitino, now coaching at Louisville, came to realize. Last week, on the occasion of the annual Louisville-Kentucky grudge match, Pitino said he regretted leaving Kentucky, a place where he and his family were content. The NBA and its millions can’t buy happiness, or guarantee success.

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The loss of national player-of-the-year candidate Wayne Simien will hurt no. 2 Kansas in the short term, but then again, the Jayhawks have gotten used to playing without their burly power forward. In Simien’s first three years, he missed 28 games, the equivalent of a full regular season. After suffering a thumb injury against South Carolina last Saturday, he’ll be on the shelf for at least a month.

Kansas coach Bill Self has a couple of options for retooling in Simien’s absence. If he chooses the conventional route, Self can insert one of three freshmen big men – C.J. Giles, Darnell Jackson, or Sasha Kaun, into the lineup. None of the rookies averages 10 minutes a game, so whoever starts will have to significantly increase his contributions. Jackson has shown the most offensive aptitude, making 67% (12-for-18) of his field goal tries. Giles leads the team with seven blocked shots.

If Self wants to play a smaller, quicker lineup, he can turn to another freshman, Alex Galindo. The 6-foot-7 Galindo has found playing time harder to come by than his fellow rookies because he toils behind a sensational pair of wing men in Keith Lanagford and J.R. Giddens. But Galindo has shown shooting touch from three-point range (43%) and might be an exciting short-term solution.

The good news for Kansas is that by the time Simien returns, at least one and perhaps three freshmen will have gained considerably more experience than they might have.

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The most impressive winning streak in college basketball belongs to Mississippi State, which has won 14 straight road games over a two-year span.

Coach Rick Stansbury’s team doesn’t play a back breaking nonconference schedule, but under his watch the Bulldogs have been willing to play mid-major schools on the road, something most upper-echelon coaches, fearing upsets, refuse to do. Last season, State won at Western Kentucky, Santa Clara, Tulane, and Arkansas-Little Rock, in addition to going 8-0 in the rugged Southeastern Conference. This year, the Bulldogs have come away with wins at New Orleans and Xavier.

All in all, the Bulldogs have won eight straight road games against mid-major schools over the last three seasons. It takes guts to schedule that many road games and talent to win them.

Stansbury’s scheduling philosophy means even more now that the NCAA has tweaked its Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). As NCAA Tournament wonks know, the RPI is one of the tools used to evaluate teams under NCAA Tournament consideration. The NCAA announced earlier this week that teams that play and win on the road can boost their RPI accordingly.

That decision may compel coaches to follow Stansbury’s lead and take their teams on the road more often – good news for mid-major schools that have trouble scheduling home games against quality competition.

In turn, the mid-majors will have a chance to improve their RPI and their NCAA Tournament resume by scoring some upsets against schools that might never have played them. That’s great for the game and great for the tournament, which has increasingly become the private domain for the power conferences. College basketball can always use a few more Gonzagas to shake things up.

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