Former Rivier coach Lance Bisson gives instructions to freshman point guard Robenson Baguidy during a recent game at the Muldoon Center. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Lance Bisson and Rivier University officials it seemed both realized that the time had come.

But it appears the Raiders decided to move up the timetable in making a men’s basketball coaching change, which Bisson ultimately accepted.

In speaking with The Telegraph a day after he and Rivier University parted ways, the now former Raiders basketball coach said the ongoing discussions he was having with the administration were going in a direction he knew there would be no turning back from the obvious:

They were on different pages.

“It was more of a timing thing,” Bisson said Thursday. “There had been conversations before (Wednesday) about it. The timing for both sides was best just to move on. It wasn’t solely just about basketball. We had been discussing the student athletic experience there. And that’s been changing slowly.

“They think they have a vision of what they want it to look like. And it wasn’t at this current day, so in their eyes it was best to move on, and I understand. I get that they they want to make it look different over there, and in their opinion I was not part of the change. Which was OK with me. It really is.”

However, between the lines it certainly appears Bisson would have liked to have finished out the season. Why not wait until the end of the season?

“That I can’t tell you,” Bisson said. “Because as much as it was truly a mutual agreement, the timing, I would say was not. The timing was certainly on their timetable.”

There’s no doubt Rivier is going through a transition, with an emphasis on recruiting, etc., in the hopes of bring in more student athletes, more economic development, and hopefully more wins than losses. Bisson was fully on board with that, but somewhere there was a disconnect. But he obviously wants what’s best for Rivier in terms of a good economic and athletic future.

“I have to see this from both sides, I’m also an alum,” he said. “I’m hopeful money will be influxed into the athletic department, changes will be made, and it will only benefit the programs. I’m truly hopefull that happens, but only time will tell.

“They’re starting to formulate visions. And sometimes, quite frankly, when you want to go in different directions, you can’t have people around who are conditioned to thinking the old way. I am one of those people, you know? And I understand that, I really, really do. And that’s part of the conversations that were had. That’s why it was easier for me to step away. I knew the direction they wanted to go in.”

Still, it seems Bisson did not go into Tuesday night’s game at Colby-Sawyer thinking or knowing that would be his last game.

“To be honest, I did not know any day, since we started in October, what the future held,” he said. “And the way I’m wired as a coach, you just can’t think that way (that the end is near). You just have to stay in the day. That’s how I operate.”

There’s no denying that Bisson and the Raiders had struggled mightily the last eight years, and some years before that in the final seasons of the Dave Morissette regime. Last year, though, they went 10-15, their best record in several years, but something went wrong this season to halt the progress, worst of which was top player Miles Gillette ran out of eligibility. Bisson didn’t expect rousing success, but he didn’t expect 2-15, either.

“We struggled with having depth,” he said. “And we just didn’t have the bigs to compete in our league. We lacked height, we lacked depth, and we had a lot of those things covered up by the fact we had a great player (Gillette) last year.

“And once we lost him, I knew we had a lot of holes to fill. … He covered a lot of our deficiencies. … You need legit bigs, and we just didn’t have enough of those.”

Bisson said he looks beyond the coaching record for the accomplishments of the program.

“We did everything we could in our time there to make it look as good as we could for the school as well as the students I was dealing with,” Bisson said. “And I’m proud of what we did, I really am.

“The dozens and dozens of messages I’ve received from alumni that were non-athletes reassures that, and the hundred of messages I received (Wednesday) from all of the players I coached. I could probably tell you half of the players I coached reached out to me yesterday. And that assures me we were doing things the right way.”

However, the won-loss column was difficult to overlook, 25-136 over the better part of eight years, six full and two partial seasons.

“It doesn’t always show up in the win-loss column,” Bisson said. “I’m proud of how we reached our goal, which was to help develop young men their families would be proud of them when they walked away after four years. And so a lot of successes.”

Yet not enough for the upper administration – the decision may have gone above new athletic director Jonathan Harper – to keep Bisson through the rest of the season, raising several eyebrows around the Division III college basketball community, not to mention the local basketball community.

“I know this week has been rough on me, and a lot of other people,” Bisson said, “but I sleep easy knowing we did accomplish a lot of our goals.”

And Bisson realized the unfortunate but most important aspect:

“It was,” he said, “time.”

Whether it looked that way or not.