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FOR the next May and April 2008, college basketball fans will watch some of the greatest minds in the sport going at one another: coaches in small programs taking on and beating larger programs, and highly regarded coaches in established programs crushing rivals with fewer resources.

Here's the question: Why hasn't all this coaching at the college level translated into success at the professional level? The N.B.A. — if we believe what we read — needs the guidance and the fresh ideas that college coaches bring to the table.

Why have some of the great college basketball minds never tried their hand at the next level? Why have college coaching had limited success in the N.B.A.? Mike Montgomery had great success at Stanford, where he had to do more with less. But he is perilously close to the bubble in the N.B.A. with the Golden State Warriors, where he has access to some great players.

If college players failed at the rate of their college coaches, we'd be calling for an overhaul of the system. On the contrary, college basketball has been a tremendous pipeline to the N.B.A. Maybe the coaches are the ones who need refinement.

In college basketball, you have more of an opportunity to impact your roster in terms of recruiting the kids you want and the kids who fit you and your system and your university and your school. Where in the N.B.A., with guaranteed contracts, it's a little different. The N.F.L. is the best pro sport leagues that there is, partly because there's a constant accountability

Is it just money? Well college coaches have the shoe contracts, the radio and television shows and the country club memberships. The players have, at best, a one-year athletic scholarship.

The college coaches cannot handle not having the suffocating, life-and-death control over players they exercise at the college level. Get them "young and dumb" — young enough to run through the brick wall and dumb enough not to know that crashing into the wall really doesn't matter.

Listen to what one of the young U.C.L.A. players, Jordan Farmar, said about the sometimes tense relationship between an N.B.A. coach and a player. "No matter what level you're at, your coach is your boss, and you're supposed to do everything in your power to do your job and please your boss," he said.

His teammate Cedric Bozeman agreed. "Maybe at the professional level, it's the salary thing or money or whatever," he said. "They make more than the coaches, so maybe they feel they're higher than the coach. But right now, I've been taught to respect my coach and do whatever he tells me."

Alabama Coach Mark Gottfried said the failure of coaches to make a successful transition might have had more to do with where they landed.

"To be honest, I think a lot of college coaches have gotten some pretty bad jobs," Gottfried , said yesterday. "You look at Atlanta a couple years ago. Lenny Wilkens may be one of the best the N.B.A.'s ever had, and he couldn't win with the group that the Hawks had. Then Lon goes in there," referring to Lon Kruger, "and they don't win, and now, all of a sudden, college coaches can't win in the N.B.A. Well, they got a terrible team, a young team. So the college guys aren't getting the best jobs with the best players."

Gottfried added: "You're not going to be in control of everything, and I think that has hurt college coaches. I would like at some point to see some college guys get the better jobs. They've gotten tough jobs at tough times and almost been viewed as transitional guys, expendable guys: get them in and out of there for a couple years and then get somebody else in there."

Gottfried has a theory: If Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski could lead the United States' men's basketball team to a gold medal in the 2008 Olympics, his success could raise the credibility of the college coach who aspires to coach N.B.A. players.

"I think it would help," Gottfried said. "He's got stature, first of all. I think stature helps in that league. That's one thing he has that not a lot college coaches have, that level of stature. I think he would do good if he was in the N.B.A. There's a respect level that players have for him that they may not have for a lot of other college coaches."

We enjoy March Madness, but what about the coaching-genius labels that we'll be throwing around so freely during the N.C.A.A. tournament. There is a deficiency in a system that supposedly has so many geniuses but so few who successfully make the transition to the N.B.A.

We talk about preparing players for the next level. Maybe we've been tweaking the wrong part of the food chain.

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