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SALT LAKE CITY — Oakland’s storybook started with the most prescient preface imaginable.

It was Wednesday in Pittsburgh when Greg Kampe, the lifer head coach, the 68-year-old making his fourth trip to the NCAA Tournament since leading Oakland University to its transition to Division I athletics in 1999, made a simple plea.

“What I’m saying is, don’t keep us out,” Kampe said, trying to level with everyone. “You know, we’re what makes this tournament. The little guy.”

Oakland hails from the Horizon League, a group of modestly funded athletic programs spread throughout the Great Lakes. It began in 1978 as the Midwestern City Conference, but only Detroit Mercy remains from the original members. The league later became the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, then changed to the Horizon in 2001. All kinds of schools have come and gone — Marquette, Dayton, Loyola Chicago, Saint Louis, Xavier, so on. They left for nicer leagues, more money, better opportunities. Butler emerged from the Horizon to reach the Final Four in 2010 and 2011, then left for the Atlantic 10 in 2013. The Horizon has mostly existed in its current form since 2020, when Robert Morris and IUPUI joined the likes of Cleveland State, Wright State, Youngstown State and others. Illinois Chicago left in 2022 for the Missouri Valley.

Oakland’s membership began in the 2013-14 season after twice making the NCAA Tournament as members of the Summit League, an even smaller league scattered from the Midwest through the Plains. The Golden Grizzlies have had success, winning more than 60 percent of their conference games, but only reached the Horizon League tournament title game once (2021) and losing. It’s been a nice program, at a regional commuter school, with a likable head coach.

Now, though?

Now everything is different, because on one March night, for 40 perfect minutes, Oakland played basketball. The Grizz beat Kentucky. Freakin’ Kentucky. Greg Kampe beat John Calipari. Someone named Jack Gohlke outshot national freshman of the year Reed Sheppard.

One of those wins. The kind that changes a place.

Kampe, born in 1955 in Defiance, Ohio, knew what was possible before the impossible happened.

“Trey Townsend, Jack Gohlke, Blake (Lampman) — they could be Jimmy Chitwood tomorrow night,” he said Wednesday of his top three players. “Don’t take that away from us.”

Never before has an NCAA Tournament been surrounded with such a high degree of anxiety. Players and coaches at all eight tournament locations across the country have been asked this week about concerns that the power conferences may squeeze the bracket to create more bids for themselves and less access for others. More big, power-conference schools. Fewer far-flung schools from leagues no one cares about.

The tension has grown palpable. Real fear. Fear that (Oral Roberts) Golden Eagles will be grounded and (Saint Peter’s) Peacocks will be de-feathered and (Princeton) Tigers will be caged. All three appeared in the Sweet 16 in the last three seasons as No. 15 seeds. And fear that those who live in ultimate lore might not get their chance. UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson. The 16s. Cinderella’s favorite Cinderellas.

The conversation this week about the future of the tournament has taken on the feel of something larger. That it’s about more than basketball.

“When you start squeezing, what makes us unique, because in America, let’s be real, you have your upper percentage, then everybody else is an underdog, know what I’m saying?” said Samford coach Bucky McMillan, a 40-year-old who, as of four years ago, was coaching high school basketball in suburban Birmingham, Ala., and, on Thursday, coached against two-time national champion Bill Self of Kansas. “Everybody else is an underdog to get to the top. That’s why they can identify with underdog teams. Most people are that team. If you take that out, this ain’t America, right?”

McMillan’s 13th-seeded Bulldogs took four-seed Kansas to the very end, losing 93-89. 

The emotion is understandable. Other than these three weeks, college basketball is a niche sport. Meaning, those who love it — really love it, all year long — know they’re on an island. They are, as a result, a little protective, a little territorial. For those loyalists, caring about college basketball is part of their identity. It’s a sense of place. It’s not about filling out a bracket, but about loving a game where the smallest places can do the biggest things.

It’s the absurdity that surrounds all of it that’s most precious. Unknown kids doing unbelievable things. Coaches behaving like children. The bizarre ecosystem around the boundaries — obsessive fans, burner accounts on social media, an extremely small amount of reporters actually invested. It’s the fact that low-major basketball programs might be closer in infrastructure to some high schools than they are to high-major basketball. It is, most importantly, that all the schools get to play for the same championship.

A place as big as Texas and as small as Grand Canyon (the school, that is). A place with the history like Kentucky and a proud historically Black college like Howard. Known spots like UConn and North Carolina and Kansas, and places like Longwood University, which is in Farmville, Va., and Stetson University, which is in DeLand, Fla., and a school called Oakland University that is, in fact, in southeast Michigan.

“The platform for these players to shine and prove themselves against these bigger power conference teams — I think that taking away from that would do a disservice to what makes March Madness so special,” Yale sophomore Danny Wolf said in Spokane on Thursday, the day before a date with Auburn.

The question is, how reasonable are the concerns?

Much of the consternation went from simmer to boil last week when SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told ESPN that the potential of tournament expansion and changes stemmed from “giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues)” and that “more competitive basketball” will soon be more condensed due to power-conference expansion.

Sankey clarified to The Athletic on Saturday, saying he doesn’t hope for a tournament exclusive to power conference schools, and said, “I understand access, I understand the special nature (of Cinderellas) and certainly respect that, but right now in college athletics, nothing is static.”

Nevertheless, the feeling across college basketball’s landscape has been that they are taking the NCAA Tournament from us. 

Tom Izzo, whose Michigan State team is playing in its 26th straight NCAA Tournament, didn’t exactly help matters, telling reporters in Charlotte on Wednesday: “I just think what’s happening now, everybody likes the upsets in the first weekend, but I’m not sure moving on that’s what’s best for the game.”

The comment went viral, in part because it lacked context. Izzo later clarified his statement, telling The Athletic he isn’t against the small schools; his primary issue is more about the makeup of the NCAA Tournament selection committee and his desire for more former coaches to be included. But the furor he caused spoke to the moment at hand.

Whether these concerns are hyperbolic or not is what’s difficult to decipher. With the SEC and Big Ten growing larger and larger and no real end of conference realignment in sight, their schools’ heavy inclusion in the NCAA Tournament will be simple math for those leagues. Schools have consolidated, so while their access to tournament bids was previously spread among smaller pools, they will now all be members of a larger pond. They are going to argue, somewhat reasonably, that additional bids are a natural byproduct. Consider: If the Pac-12 averaged four or five bids a year, but now ceases to exist and those schools are spread to other leagues, those leagues should “inherit” those bids.

In reality, the larger conferences take as much umbrage with the lower leagues’ maneuverings as the other way around. The lowest-level conferences — the likes of the Northeast Conference, Southwestern Athletic Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Southland Conference, Ohio Valley — regularly lose teams looking to move up for better opportunities, and opt to invite Division II schools to transition to D-I for membership simply to survive. In turn, the leagues themselves, already composed of financially challenged programs, only continue to be watered down. Their access to the NCAA Tournament is as much about those conferences needing the seven-figure payout for the game as it is about actually competing.

To some, that’s simply the cost of college basketball’s populist bent. To others, it’s a surplus of non-competitive overstock.

Thus, change feels like a foregone conclusion. Colorado State head coach Niko Medved said that “everybody can read the tea leaves” and that it’s “a formality that it will expand.”

Numerous scenarios exist, but the most plausible seems to be a move to 72 teams that increases at-large opportunities to allow the final eight teams (up from four) selected for the field to matchup in play-in games, while the bottom eight teams (up from four) play for the 16-seed lines.

All varieties of speculative other scenarios can be conjured, but what’s without question is that tournament expansion will most likely increase chances for the top schools and, at best, tolerate the existence of those other 300-odd schools hoping to make the bracket.

Automatic-qualifying spots for all conferences remain sacred and should stay that way. It seems those seeking change at least realize this. The tournament is a billion-dollar product because of the madness. It’s not just a slogan.

So, as long as the Horizon exists, and the likes of the Southern Conference (Samford) and others, they will most likely have one ticket for the NCAA Tournament and can award it how they see fit — whether to their regular season or tournament champion. They should perhaps be concerned that the ticket would be to go play another school that looks like them, instead of Kentucky.

Meanwhile, it’s not lost on anyone that current SEC members went 1-3 on Day 1 of this year’s tournament. Only Tennessee kept the day from being a total and complete disaster, with a blowout win over Saint Peter’s.

The good news is spring football is already underway.

(Photo of Oakland’s DQ Cole and Kentucky’s Rob Dillingham: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)