Dan Monson rode shotgun while his wife, Darci, steered the car down I-15 through the deserts that separate Las Vegas from California. Outside his window, the barren wasteland stretched on to the horizon, offering a view to everywhere and nowhere all at once. The irony of that view was not lost on Monson, who suddenly finds himself on a similar road. He is headed to college basketball paradise, to the first round of the NCAA Tournament. He also is no longer employed by the school he will represent once he gets there.

Long Beach State and Monson parted ways after 17 years on Monday; six days later the Beach completed an improbable three-wins-in-three-days run to capture the Big West tournament and the automatic bid that comes with it. “I guess you could say I’m in the middle of nowhere in a lot of respects,” Monson says as he and Darci cut through Barstow, Calif., racing home to prep for the selection show party they’ll host for the players in a few hours. “I’m in a desert in my car and in my career.”

It is a bizarre and yet somehow oddly fitting arc for Monson.

Twenty-five years ago, Monson was the hotshot coach after launching a tiny Jesuit school into the national basketball conversation. In 1999, Gonzaga rolled to the Elite Eight, the first step in what would…