BRADENTON, Fla. -- Oh, I had one ready to fire off.
No, I actually had it written, a full column on how Duquesne had dumbed it up all over again, how basketball might as well become a canceled curriculum, how even a wholly new administration and athletic department weren't immune to the incompetence of their predecessors.
The figurative pen might as well have been acidic, driven in part by having gone to school there myself and having watched so much of the Bluff's identity washed away over the decades.
And then a completely crazy thing happened: Duquesne did something really right.
If Keith Dambrot, the venerable, respected and highly successful coach at Akron, had been hired within minutes of Jim Ferry's firing, it would have been a pleasant surprise. Dave Harper, the new AD, and Ken Gormley, the new school president, would have been politely applauded, and that would have been that.
But for this hire to follow four other coaches rejecting the Dukes, one after the other, like a daily satire skit?
To follow the release requests of the Dukes' two outstanding freshmen, Mike Lewis II and Isiaha Mike, as well as other players?
To pony up $7 million over seven years?
To hire a better coach than the one Pitt's employing?
That's a comeback unlike any we've seen on the court at Palumbo in forever.
I'm going to be patient here, obviously, and that applies in both directions. But the fair starting point for a coach like Dambrot is respect. He was 305-139 in 13 years at Akron. He made the NCAA Tournament three times, the NIT five. He won 20-plus games each of the past dozen seasons.
Here's a superbly produced video on Dambrot's career, by the Akron athletic department and released just three weeks ago:
Man if it wasn't for Big Frank, Bruce Kelker, Willie Earl, @CoachDambrot @CoachDruJoyce I wouldn't be the player/man I am today! As a kid...
— LeBron James (@KingJames) March 27, 2017
... and that's because, of course, he was LeBron's high school coach, as if this story needed more drama.
But this story won't go all Cinderella over one summer. Even if Dambrot manages to keep Lewis II and Mike, the rebuild will be very real. He'll want to do it the way he did with the Zips, by recruiting right out of high school, molding players in his vision over the full four years, then replenishing. That won't be easy at Duquesne, to put it mildly. The brand isn't just tarnished. It's buried 5 1/2 feet deep.
He'll also need help. As impressive as this financial commitment to this coach is, it's only the beginning. I've heard for years from people inside the program about the aging facilities, the limited travel budget for recruiting, the lack of promotion to sell tickets ... all of that's got to change, too. By all accounts, Dambrot sought this before saying yes, but it's still incumbent on Harper and especially Gormley, not to mention the boosters, to deliver.
It's a great day for Duquesne basketball, and I'm happy for a lot of good people I know up there. I believe, as I wrote three months ago, that there's a real and genuine audience for a second significant basketball program inside city limits.
But the days that follow have to be all the greater for that to happen.