A national search to locate Coach Chalkdust’s replacement will begin immediately.

‘Tis the obligatory line at the end of every somber press release announcing the departure of a Maine collegiate boss’ departure to warmer, greener or richer climes.

Every person in every profession who’s ever had friends, family or co-workers can appreciate the concept of Things You’re Supposed to Say. The check’s in the mail. Our best person is working on it. Crazy weather we’re having, huh? No, that dress does not make you look fat.

Colleges have that sentence on permanent cut-and-paste beck and call. It shares the same ear-grating potential and bankruptcy of meaning with its disclaimer cousins.

Two of Maine’s premier NCAA Division III basketball programs, two teams that drew smaller crowds than a fender bender not even a decade ago, bid farewell to the architects who bestowed them with relevance last month.

Joe Reilly packed his bags at Bates to accept a men’s head coaching post closer to his boyhood home at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Stefanie Pemper signed off at Bowdoin to climb that professional Jacob’s Ladder and take on the same women’s job at D-I Navy.

Each left behind a lofty winning percentage, a talent-laden roster, a loaded recruiting class and a daunting act to follow. Both steppingstone institutions, surely surprised but not shocked, reluctantly filed the traditional Mad Lib report. Punctuated, of course, by that empty promise to leave no boulder in its place while seeking its next protector of the hardwood faith.

Loosely translated, “national search” at a school in the quaint but quirky New England Small College Athletic Conference means that anyone lacking a Master’s degree or at least Ivy League/NESCAC Bachelor of Fine Arts distinction need not apply.

Too bad that diminishes the talent pool by 80 percent and ultimately drains it of the people potentially best qualified to run a powerful D-III program in our sheltered corner of the map. Namely, the brilliant basketball minds who have sculpted Maine basketball into the can’t-miss form of entertainment it is during the endless winter.

When will Bates, Bowdoin or Colby take a flyer on someone such as a Paul Vachon, a Gavin Kane or another established high school basketball coach to run its program?

Not that either one of those local legends has expressed interest or has a desire to take on such a monumental task at this, um, advanced stage in their careers. Fill in the blank with your own favorite of recent vintage, then. Liz Rickett. Todd Hanson. Paul True.

It is no coincidence that Bowdoin and Bates’ enjoyed a basketball revival as Pemper and Reilly sold coveted in-state recruits such as Zak Ray, Angelo Salvaggio, Brian Gerrity, Chris Wilson, Kristi Royer, Lora Trenkle, Justine Pouravelis and Alexa Kaubris on the dual academic and athletic challenge of their fine schools.

Tough to do that when you can’t exactly lure them with Advanced Velcro Fastening 101. Plus, it takes patience – something too few coaches brought to those respective offices before the Pemper/Reilly administrations – to build that credibility with recruits who are being romanced by the more public, more down-home Southern Maine, Maine-Farmington or Husson.

Who better to keep that network alive that someone who intimately understands the Maine high school basketball scene and the psyche of kids who excel at that level?

Bates would be wise to pull a page from its own playbook from the mid-1990s, when it made a brilliant hire and tabbed Jim Murphy to lead its women’s basketball and soccer programs. Murphy was the perfect storm: Portland native; Bates graduate; years of high school (operative word there) teaching, coaching and championship winning experience in Massachusetts; and greatest guy any 18-year-old young woman or her parents could ever hope to meet.

Even the University of Maine, perennially obsessed with national searches, veered pleasantly in this direction by choosing Ted Woodward and Cindy Blodgett to lead its basketball programs. Both have long-term ties to the state. Both get it. Both will win big, if given a fair opportunity.

Yes, Pemper and Reilly were fresh-faced Gen X-ers without so much as a thread tying them to Maine when they relocated to Brunswick and Lewiston. But it’s worth noting that both of them fit the pattern of 98 percent of the CBB coaching hires in the big four team sports since the 1970s.

Including the departed duo, you can count the success stories on one hand. The odds of each school casting a nationwide net and landing another Stefanie Pemper or Joe Reilly are infinitesimal.

The right answer for both schools might be just outside their window. It’ll look good on them. And I’m not just saying that.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].