You simply cannot argue with the hardware.

Binghamton’s athletic department boasts 17 coaches whose goals all vary from sport to sport, but the light at the end of each coach’s tunnel glimmers from the same item: an ever-elusive conference championship trophy.

This year (with a number of teams, yes, still competing with chances for league titles), one coach brought his team to that promised land and, in the process, earned himself Pipe Dream’s Coach of the Year honors. Congratulations are due to Glenn Kiriyama, BU’s seventh-year volleyball head coach.

The story of BU volleyball simply wasn’t supposed to be pretty. In the preseason, all signs pointed to a middle-of-the-pack finish: other teams boasted bigger hitters, taller blockers, more experienced liberos and more consistent setters.

The proverbial elephant in the room was Albany, with its million all-conference selections, a returning conference MVP and last year’s title; the Great Danes were supposed to waltz to the NCAAs with no problem.

Enter Glenn Kiriyama.

The coach is a kind-hearted, soft-spoken BYU graduate with a cuss-word-free vernacular. This year, he added one more phrase to his forbidden list: ‘rebuilding year.’

BU started out the year very much an on-or-off team, sometimes playing cohesively — including a dramatic five-game victory over St. John’s — but sometimes playing miserably, including a befuddling loss to Elon College at the William & Mary tournament.

When I spoke with the coach after the William & Mary tournament, he sounded like he lost his best friend. ‘Rebuilding’ seemed more like ‘recovering.’ The cuss-free coach seemed full of d-words on the phone: depressed, dejected, even despondent.

But then things changed. When conference play kicked off, BU became simply unstoppable. The young Bearcats picked up a huge come-from-behind win against New Hampshire at the West Gym on Oct. 2 after falling behind two games to none, a win that vaulted them to the top of the conference standings — a position they wouldn’t relinquish for over a month.

During that month, the Bearcats, selected to finish sixth in the conference, picked up their biggest win in program history, a flabbergasting 3-1 victory over Albany, the team that dismantled a stronger BU team in the America East tournament last year — and seemed more than poised to do it again. (The wildly-offensive laughter that some of Albany’s team shared during that night’s pre-game warm-ups certainly wasn’t there when they ran a zillion suicides the next day at practice.)

The Bearcats’ outlook in that Albany game — we can beat anyone, anytime, anywhere — became a mantra that stuck with them all the way through the remainder of the regular season. The girls in green and white became a dominant force in the America East, losing just two more matches (at Albany and at Maine) heading into the conference tournament — at Albany.

Even with a dream regular season, it was difficult to picture BU bringing home the title from Albany’s University Gym — a place that seemed to haunt the team for years. Last year, during the regular season, star middle blocker Anne Crocus broke her fibula at that very gym, and in her return in the tournament, the Danes again embarrassed the Bearcats in easy fashion.

But Glenn Kiriyama’s Bearcats refused to let any thoughts of an Albany curse enter their minds. No. 2 BU went to the state capitol brimming with confidence, set to face off against a third-seeded Maine team that had recently defeated them, except now BU had to play against a backdrop of nightmarish purple and gold.

Mindset problems? Inexperience? Historically disadvantaged up route 81? Glenn Kiriyama didn’t want to hear any of it. Quietly inspiring his young team and led by his ace recruit Katie Brody (probably the best player in the conference), Kiriyama’s gameplan worked to perfection as BU fought off Maine in three out of four super-close games to advance to its first AE Championship — and keep its dream season alive.

In Saturday’s nightcap, No. 4 Stony Brook stunned No. 1 Albany in front of a raucous University Gym crowd, setting up a SUNY vs. SUNY showdown involving two teams that no one could’ve ever expected. Coming off of their program’s biggest win of the year, Stony Brook stole a bit of the Cinderella storyline from Binghamton, but Kiriyama’s Bearcats maintained their focus. As shown by Stony Brook’s men’s soccer championship (over Binghamton) the weekend before, anything can happen in a championship game, and execution at such a crucial time is almost equaled by the size of your heart.

On that fateful Sunday, the Bearcats’ hearts were as coordinated as the bump-set-spike they had spent months perfecting. With two rookies on the court — one of whom, Brianna Strong, had just stepped into a starting role weeks before — it’s pretty damn hard to win a championship game, but that’s just what Kiriyama’s ‘Cats did, earning the program’s first America East championship, its first NCAA D-I tournament berth (they’d fall to second-seeded Penn State at PSU) and tons of well-deserved respect for a Binghamton program that will no longer fly under the radar.

Now, I’ll bet our soft-spoken coach of the year selection would disapprove of my use of the d-word to describe his performance. Sorry, coach; let me try one last d-word you once told me you didn’t want to hear last fall to describe your team’s unbelievable ascent to glory: destiny. Congratulations.