Oakland is the latest to tangle up the Blue
Kentucky is reconsidering its priorities after the latest NCAA loss
He was an assistant basketball coach at Toledo, with the same vague hopes and dreams as a thousand other assistants. Then the baseball coach walked in and told Greg Kampe that the head coaching job at Oakland was open.
“I’m not moving to California,” Kampe said.
That was 40 years ago. In the interim, Kampe has found himself explaining to almost every recruit that Oakland, this Oakland, is just north of Detroit, not just east of San Francisco. Not that he knew he would become a fixture on this campus, one of the few that has two highly-rated golf courses on the property. He told his athletic director that he fully expected to win the NCAA Division II championship in his first year, then graciously accept an offer to coach UCLA.
Much has changed since then (including UCLA). But Kampe, 68, has stayed put, winning 699 games overall and reaching four NCAA tournaments. In their last previous trip, the Grizzlies pushed Texas and lost, 85-81. Last Sunday, Oakland learned it would be matched against Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Kampe, typically, announced this “was as good a matchup as we could have,” and some inhabitants of the Big Blue Nation took umbrage at that. They didn’t know much about this speed bump of a team and its unfiltered coach who has a base salary of about $350,000, except that Kampe had a lot of gall to talk optimistically about hanging with a program that had seven players in this year’s NBA All-Star Game. When Michigan State’s Tom Izzo was complaining that there were too many obscure schools in the tournament, Oakland was one of his references.
As it turned out, Oakland dared to walk onto the same court with the Big Blue and became this year’s St. Peter’s, the mystery school that ousted Kentucky two years ago. It became Mercer and Lehigh (which beat Duke in tournaments of yesteryear), Weber State (which beat North Carolina), Idaho State (which beat UCLA), and Maryland-Baltimore County (the first 16th seed to beat a top seed, Virginia, in the first round). The Grizzlies won, 80-76. and will play North Carolina State on Saturday. This type of thing is no longer an outlier. There are reasons for it, all of which were on full display, and Kentucky coach John Calipari, the longtime middleman who shepherded freshmen through his program and into the world, seemed to accept that the world has changed. Maybe, he said, it was time to bring in more older players. His teenagers, regardless of their pedigree, have too many generic disadvantages against young adults.
In this game, Antonio Reeves was Kentucky’s only reliable attendee. He hit 11 of 18 shots and scored 27 points. But then Reeves has been around. He is a grad transfer from Illinois State.
Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham had a different night. They are freshmen, good ones, both likely first-round picks in June’s NBA draft, and when they’re in All-Star Games nobody will be talking about this misbegotten night in Pittsburgh, just as nobody seems to care (outside of the Bluegrass) that Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t win NCAA championships.
But Sheppard and Dillingham ended their college careers in the tank. Together they were 3-for-14, and Sheppard had one field goal.
Jack Gohlke is probably done with college, too. He came to Oakland from Hillsdale College, a Division II school. He grew up in Pewaukee, Wis., home of the Watt brothers, and there’s no calculating the number of jumpers he put up. Going into this game Gohlke had taken 355 shots this season, only eight of which were launched inside the 3-point line.
So the scouting report was clear, and yet Gohlke drilled 10 three-pointers, one short of the record set in 1990 by Loyola Marymount’s Jeff Fryer, in the wake of Hank Gathers’ death. All 20 of his tries were from deep, and he scored 32.
“He’s a rock star,” Kampe said. “Nobody’s done that since Steph Curry.”
Trey Townsend, whose dad Skip played for Kampe at Oakland, provided 17 points and 12 rebounds, and DQ Cole gave the Grizzlies 12 and eight. Through it all the Grizzlies got the loose balls, the rebounds and the breaks that were required. Townsend hit a long one with 14:38 left, and from that moment Oakland did not trail. Cole’s 3-pointer, on an assist from former Michigan State player Rocket Watts, put Oakland ahead by four with :37 left, and Kentucky went gently into that good night, although the Wildcats might wait for civic unrest to subside before they reach Lexington.
“Kentucky didn’t play bad,” Kampe said. “We played really well. But we played Ohio State down to the wire, we were tied with Illinois with five minutes left, we won at Xavier. What mid-major wins at the Cintas Center? I had a guy from Kentucky tweet that the 300-year-old coach with gray hair should shut up and take his loss. Well, maybe I am close to 300. It means I don’t think about myself that much. I think about getting these guys ready for the next one, and I think about being grateful that I’m still coaching. But we knew we could win this one.”
It was the only real tremor of the tournament’s first full day. McNeese State was thought to be a troublesome opponent for Gonzaga, but the Zags led by 35 points on the way to winning, 86-65.
Arizona looked vulnerable in the first half but ended Dan Monson’s long goodbye at Long Beach State, 85-65. Monson said he felt like he was a walking Seinfeld episode, and thanks to his good humor and perspective, this was an almost inspirational story, the way his team won the Big West tournament after Monson and Long Beach State had a “mutual parting.” But then athletic director Bobby Smitherman befouled it all by claiming he engineered the whole thing to inspire the players. “I’m not trying to pat myself on the back but it worked,” he said, contemptibly.
Kansas, deprived of headline player Keith McCullar, was a popular target for bracket-pickers but played strongly and led Samford by 21. Then the Baptist school from Birmingham maintained the pressure and was suddenly with a point. Then Samford was down seven with 2:16 left. But when Jaden Campbell popped a 3-pointer with :20 left, the Bulldogs trailed, 90-89.
What happened next looked more like a fiasco with each replay. Nicolas Timberlake was streaking down for a Kansas dunk when A.J. Staton-McCray tracked him down, LeBron style, and flicked the ball away at the rim. Staton-McCray appeared to touch only leather. He got whistled anyway, and Timberlake made both free throws, and the Jayhawks stumbled across the line to a 93-89 win.
Three teams that had to win their league tournaments just kept winning — N.C. State, Duquesne and Oregon, which got 40 from Jermaine Cousinard in a stress-free win over South Carolina, where Cousinard once played.
But it was Oakland’s night, the kind of night that resonates out from its campus and reaches Oaklands everywhere. Greg Kampe was just excited that the game would not be televised on the various Turner channels but on “CBS, prime time, at 8 o’clock.”
Maybe it could become a “CIS Oakland” episode. Considering how familiar it was, and how easy to analyze and understand, maybe not.
That foul call on Samford wrecked a good day of hoops for me. That Samford kid never touched him - there was a small space between their bodies, and it was shameful to reward Kansas two free throws.
Nevada started playing to not lose around the 5:00 mark, and of course they proceeded to gag the game away to Dayton.
Bill Self has the best wig in the NCAA, with slow modifications over the last 20 years.
I did not have the heart to give HBO Max my credit card number this late in the month so I heard it all on the radio and that block was probably a disgrace. But the Samford community can rightly be excited that everyone who loved March was riveted to their game at 11:45 pm on a Thursday.