So the fallout from USC will echo for a bit. Interesting bit, if true.

The university wasted no time searching for a replacement with Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon the top choice followed by former NBA coaches Jeff Van Gundy and Reggie Theus and Southern Mississippi coach Larry Eustachy.

Sources said last week USC started the process of contacting Dixon, a native of the San Fernando Valley and one of the nation’s top young coaches. But the Pitt coach is believed to have a buyout clause worth more than $1 million. Dixon did not return a message Tuesday night.

Only the timing of Floyd’s decision came as a surprise. Sources close to Floyd said USC was prepared to fire him but not until the completion of an NCAA investigation into whether former guard O.J. Mayo received cash and other benefits from his closest advisor, Rodney Guillory, who helped steer Mayo to the Trojans.

So if this information was to be true, they were pursuing the standard back-channel feelers to see about getting Dixon… eventually. If the other part of the story — that USC would fire Floyd after the NCAA investigation was complete — is true, well that end still does not appear to be near.

The NCAA has combined that investigation with the USC football side with Reggie Bush. Both have been dragging for some time and no one is predicting an imminent conclusion any time soon.

In other words, I’m a little hesitent to believe too much of this. Besides look at that list of potential. It’s apparently pipe dreams in Dixon or Jeff Van Gundy. Then it drops all the way down to Reggie Theus or Larry Eustachy. (Larry Eustachy? Really? They want to follow Floyd with another Iowa State coach that found a unique way to destroy his own career and toils down at Southern Miss?)

Give Andy Katz at ESPN.com credit for trying to put the early kibosh on the rumors of Dixon to USC. He was saying nay on that last night on ESPNews and in his story today.

They could make a play for someone like Pitt’s Jamie Dixon. But through sources, Dixon has said he’s not interested in making a move. He is currently vacationing in Hawaii and will be heading to Colorado Springs and then New Zealand for the next four weeks as head coach of the FIBA U-19 USA team.

As I said last night. There is no way Dixon or any quality coach that has a job right now would leave for USC at this point.The U-19 head coaching gig alone is reason enough. He can’t and wouldn’t pull out now. So he would not be able to actually start the job — recruiting, hiring assistants and all the other stuff until nearly August.

Also, this is not Indiana plucking Tom Crean from Marquette while waiting for the NCAA fallout from Kelvin Sampson. USC will not spend that kind of money for a coach that Indiana did. Nor does USC have the tradition or support for basketball.

There is already speculation that USC is acting to sacrifice the basketball coach and program to the NCAA to spare the football. Not many smart coaches in a good spot are going to jump into that mess without a big-ass payday — regardless of family and local ties.

If I’m correct, Dixon will be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 million dollars at Pitt. Given cost of living increases — housing allowance alone — plus the length of any deal they’d have to give him to come into this mess. Well, we are probably talking somewhere in the region of a 7-year. $21 million contract.

It would have to be something with a lot of money and a lot of security. USC didn’t even break $1 million with Floyd’s old contract (there is some uncertainty as to whether Floyd and USC finished his new contract before the resignation).

The names that actually make some sense if they want to hire now rather than have a 1-year lame-duck interim coach would be out-of-work coaches like Billy Gillispie or even Bob Knight. Or even Dan Monson at Long Beach State (who came and cleaned up Minnesota after Haskins — albeit without winning).

My first impulse would be that USC would just do the interim route, but they might think long and hard about how poorly that went for Cinci after the late firing of Huggins at Cinci. That would probably be the more comparable situation than the rosy-view of how things worked out at Arizona. Cinci had lots to deal with after Huggins was gone from increased NCAA scrutiny, to lots of talent leaving right away, and less money.

So we can expect the rumors and noise, but not much else.