Stanford said it will aggressively defend itself against a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by former basketball coach Johnny Dawkins, who is seeking in excess of $7 million in damages stemming from his dismissal last spring.

In a statement issued Wednesday night — more than 48 hours after the suit was filed in Santa Clara Superior Court — the university said it hadn’t seen a copy of the complaint but laid out its case for not agreeing to Dawkins’ buyout demand.

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Now the head coach at Central Florida, Dawkins believes he is owed approximately $2.3 million in direct damages and is seeking an additional $5 million in punitive and exemplary damages.

The mitigation clause in his Stanford contract — what the school would owe Dawkins (after termination) if he was hired elsewhere — is at the heart of his complaint.

Dawkins was fired without cause March 14, 2016. Nine days later, he accepted the UCF job.

His argument: At the time of termination, Dawkins agreed to release all claims (financial or otherwise) against Stanford. In exchange, the university would pay him $2.3 million — essentially, the value of the final two years of his contract — and drop the mitigation clause, thereby preventing future earnings from being used to offset the lump-sum buyout.

But Stanford then reversed course, according to the complaint, and said it was, in fact, entitled to withhold future earnings (i.e., Dawkins’ compensation from UCF) from the amount owed to him.

In its response, Stanford focused on the terms of the original contract:

“If Dawkins obtained other employment that paid less than his salary at Stanford, he could receive the difference between his Stanford base salary (as adjusted) and his post termination earnings for the remaining term of the Stanford contract, in this case two years.”

The university made no mention of the March ’16 termination agreement under which, according to Dawkins’ complaint, Stanford agreed to drop the mitigation clause.

Stanford also noted that Dawkins’ contract with UCF calls for his salary in the first two years — the years covered by his Stanford buyout — to be “a fraction of the amount of his annual salary in each of the next four years.”

In other words, Dawkins and his representatives structured a back-loaded deal with UCF that placed maximum financial liability on Stanford for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons.

Stanford said it attempted to ascertain information about the motivation behind the structure of Dawkins’ contract with UCF — to no avail.