Tuesday morning, the Golden State Warriors announced their plan to buy out the remaining two years of head coach Mike Montgomery’s contract. With that, the clamoring for the return of the man who led the Stanford Cardinal to 16 postseason appearances in his 18 years on The Farm (including a Final Four) will surely begin. The truth is Stanford fans are clinging to the glory years under Montgomery and need to move on.

It’s not that Montgomery is not a good coach, and I do buy into any number of the standard explanations for his failure on the other side of the Bay. “His style wasn’t cut out for the NBA.” “The Warriors just didn’t have good enough personnel.” I’d believe either, and regardless of his recent failings, I still do believe the man can coach basketball. But Cardinal faithfuls calling for Trent Johnson’s job and Montgomery’s re-hiring (assuming he would even take the Stanford job if offered) are simply living in the past.

This Stanford team is headed in a new direction. While the Cardinal did struggle and underachieve this past year, Johnson has the squad lined up to be in pretty good shape in the coming seasons. It may have taken the former Wolfpack coach a little while to put his fingerprints on this team, but now, it appears he has a core group of players around whom to build.

Montgomery had a great run at Stanford, artfully finding ways to recruit talented players who could fit in his system while still meeting the strenuous academic requirements. (It’s worth noting that the Montgomery miracle might not have lasted forever. His last two recruiting classes were among his weakest.) It’s no wonder he became a West Coast coaching legend, building a consistent winner under such difficult conditions. And when he left the Cardinal two seasons ago, he left a talented roster behind. So when Johnson came in and struggled with players like Rob Little, Nick Robinson, Dan Grunfeld, Matt Haryasz and Chris Hernandez, people immediately blamed the new coach. But the truth is, those guys were Mike Montgomery players, guys who fit in his system, who he knew how to win with. They were players with strengths tailored to Montgomery’s scheme. People saw the results and knew that their team had won with those players before. They didn’t know how to react to losing other than to long for Montgomery. Now, Montgomery is out of a job, and quickly, dreams of re-hiring him will doubtless resurface.

Well, you know how when you break up with your girlfriend and a couple years later when you see her again, she looks good and you think you might want to get back together? You don’t know? Ok, maybe that’s just me. But the point is, over those two years, you’ve changed, and you and your ex would no longer work together. Well that’s the case with this Cardinal team and Montgomery. He’s not right for this Stanford team anymore, and now finally, Trent Johnson is.

Montgomery’s teams had a distinct style. They played a straight man-to-man defense and a non-trapping zone, they ran a lot of high-low sets on offense and they were pretty un-athletic. Trent Johnson doesn’t coach that way. He likes to play an intense style of man-to-man defense with the goal of forcing turnovers. He seeks to spread the floor offensively with a relatively unstructured offense that lets his players take advantage of mismatches created by their athleticism, and focuses less on using screens to free up three-point shooters.

There might be many reasons last year’s highly-touted seniors failed to live up to expectations, but the truth is, the Grunfelds, Haryaszs and Hernandezes of the world aren’t the players you want if you are going to play the way Johnson tries to play. What Johnson has in place now is a young (meaning they will have time to grow and improve) group of athletes. Players like Mitch Johnson, Anthony Goods, Lawrence Hill, Landry Fields, Da-Veed Dildy, Will Paul and Brook and Robin Lopez fit the Johnson mold and have a chance to thrive in his system. (Not to mention the fact that the Cardinal have an excellent recruiting class coming in for the 2007-2008 campaign.) It may not be this year - there are still a few Montgomery-recruited holdovers like Peter Prowitt and Taj Finger to steal minutes from the younger post players, and the team is still very young - but Johnson has the team built to succeed in his way for the future.

So for all those frustrated Stanford basketball fans who look back longingly to the days when Stanford was a powerhouse with Montgomery at the helm, keep in mind that this is a new era. Yes, Montgomery might be available now, and yes, he is a good coach. But he is not the man for this team. That ship has sailed.