When former Marquette men’s basketball coach Buzz Williams left for Virginia Tech last month, he fulfilled a personal career goal: to take charge of a program with a big athletic budget in a southern state.

However, his decision suddenly looks desperate and short-sighted, as several jobs that would be better fits for Williams opened up recently.

Last Tuesday, Tennessee’s Cuonzo Martin left Knoxville to become the next head coach at the University of California, Berkeley. Martin, the runner-up candidate in the Marquette coaching search just weeks earlier, dealt with a passionate and sometimes hostile fan base at Tennessee that continually called for his head before he made the NCAA Tournament in March. After the Volunteers made a surprising run to the Sweet 16, Martin seized his opportunity to jump ship to a historically better program.

Two days later, another prominent Southeastern Conference job opened up when Frank Haith shocked the college basketball world by leaving Missouri for a significantly less prestigious job at Tulsa. The 2012 National Coach of the Year left in part because of a toxic relationship with fans and because his job security kept shrinking. Ultimately, Haith, with the exception of the 2011-12 regular season, is not a top-level Division I coach, and he jumped ship before the administration in Columbia figured that out.

Both the Tennessee and Missouri vacancies are considerably more attractive than the Virginia Tech job was a month ago. The two southern squads rake in plenty of money from their lucrative SEC football programs and have plenty of established talent and recent success surrounding them. According to a story in The Tennessean, ESPN’s Jay Bilas called Tennessee “a top 30 program” and cited its facilities, fan base and past success as reasons why. The SEC is also a limited basketball league where success could come quick for a new coach against inferior competition.

Virginia Tech benefits from the Atlantic Coast Conference’s solid revenue stream and revamped conference model, but that’s about it. The Hokies made the NCAA Tournament twice in 28 years, but never made the Final Four. They are also coming off one of their worst seasons in recent memory, going 9-22 overall and just 2-16 in the ACC. Additionally, the murderer’s row of Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse and Louisville at the top of the ACC will make contending difficult for Williams in the coming seasons.

While the timing of Williams’ departure hindered his career aspirations, it will ultimately help Marquette. Leaving so early in the offseason, on just the second day of the NCAA Tournament, gave interim athletic director Bill Cords plenty of time to conduct a coaching search. When Marquette hired Steve Wojciechowski 10 days later, he still had most of the offseason ahead of him to rebuild the roster and contact 2014 recruits.

So far, Wojciechowski held the current roster together and kept one of Williams’ five recruits, Green Bay’s Sandy Cohen. Two of the other four, Ahmed Hill and Satchel Pierce, followed Williams’ to Virginia Tech. Even so, Marquette would not have kept all of its nine current players had Williams stayed simply due to the players’ frustrations with his coaching style.

Williams settling for a second-rate job when he did will ultimately make Marquette better.