With all due respect to the Stanford basketball program, the Lopez twins, Bob Bowlsby, and the freshly minted head coach of the Cardinal men’s team, Johnny Dawkins, it should be obvious to anyone really paying attention that this was no one’s first choice.

By which I mean this probably wasn’t what Bowlsby or former coach Trent Johnson wanted. It definitely wasn’t what the University or its sports fans wanted. And really, as Dawkins will probably find soon enough, this job isn’t even what he envisioned, and hence, maybe not what he wanted either.

I’m speaking of course of the recent drama that played out in a matter of a few weeks. The exact sequence of events is somewhat confusing, but suffice it to say that Johnson isn’t here any more, Mike Montgomery is across the Bay, and the Stanford program — for better or worse — looks to be headed in a drastically different direction after its best season in years. Needless to say, many were taken by surprise.

I would imagine Johnson himself was taken by surprise as well, given the rumors flying around the Bay Area about how he feared for his job security entering the final year of his contract. But when you’re losing, by far, your program’s most talented players, with no sure replacements on the horizon and an instant pay-raise in the offer from the Tigers, you take what you can get and move on.

I doubt very much that there will be any hard feelings between Johnson and most of his colleagues in the Department of Athletics, despite his departure. Indeed, I doubt many Stanford fans will be that upset with the man who many thought always wanted to be a “lifer” with the Stanford program.

But that dilemma is, finally, behind Bowlsby and the Cardinal. Sort of. Because even though the coach the Stanford Athletics Department selected to replace Johnson appears, in many ways, to be an excellent fit for the program, it’s hard to envision a way in which things could have gone worse following Stanford’s Sweet 16 finish in the NCAA Tournament.

That Dawkins is worthy of a promotion to the Division I head coaching ranks is no doubt true. The failures of other former Duke assistants aside, it would be hard to envision a program that could better groom a coach for the unique challenges presented by the Stanford situation.

But realistically, what’s the upside? The best-case scenario?

Let’s say things go well for Dawkins, and in two or three years he has the program humming again like it once did under Mike Montgomery. Stanford has an identifiable style and is a contender year in and year out. As fantastic a development as that would be, isn’t it likely to be a short one? If Dawkins is the kind of coach who can fix what is sure to ail Stanford next season, then he’ll be exactly the kind of coach that Duke might want in the not-too-distant future when Coach K eventually decides to call it a career. Or some other athletic department with deeper pockets than the Cardinal’s, for that matter.

Stanford basketball was seen as a possible final destination for their coaching careers by two men that we know of — Montgomery and Johnson. For pretty much everyone else in the coaching world it’s a stepping stone — a place to show your worth at a University that operates under special conditions. The thinking is that if you can make it work here, you can make it work better somewhere else that will let you recruit someone to play for you independent of his academic abilities.

In a little over a week, the Cardinal lost its chance to lock down a good coach for a career. Now, it’s back to square one.

Denis Griffin is a senior who is glad that he is on his way out, at least when it comes to being a Stanford basketball fan. Email him at djgriff@stanford.edu.