Dakich's demotion, so to speak, would have been a fitting end to the story of the hotheaded and fallible coach finally ending up at home in Bloomington, Indiana, where he both played and coached under Bob Knight. But strangely that was far from the end of the story.

Earlier this year Dakich replaced Rob Senderoff as assistant coach, because Senderoff left the program for almost the same reasons Sampson was bought out of his contract last week. Once last Friday's news went down that Sampson was out and Dakich was in, the time elapsed between his departure from BGSU and backroom swearing-in didn't even add up to a calendar year.

Now I know how Forrest Gump's hometown connections felt when they saw him on TV meeting the president.

There's no telling how Dakich will do in the final weeks of the season — he and IU won at lowly Northwestern on Saturday — although at 23-4, IU is looking at a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. But moreover, I'm infinitely clueless on how I want him to fare as interim head coach. Do I want the guy to fail, so as to validate the last few seasons of futility he brought upon BGSU? Or perhaps I want the man to succeed, not only because a tiny bit of fortune might be due for him, but also to sufficiently disturb the peaceful equilibrium of college basketball.

By all proper reason, Dakich should not have been given a chance to sniff the collegiate sideline, let alone one near a Big Ten decal, and especially not as the role of head coach. But the alignment of Dan Dakich's BGSU contract and Kelvin Sampson's cell phone bill laid on a vector created purely out of circumstance. Now the man who coached a team to lose 14 of their last 17 games (in the Mid-American Conference, mind you) will now cook up plays on a dry erase board for a team ranked 15th in the nation, sitting ½ game back in the Big Ten, and showing no reason they can't reach the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16.

Coach, Forrest. Coach.

(Photo credits: J.D. Pooley/Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune, Nam Y. Huh/AP)