PITTSBURGH — Greg Kampe’s eyebrows furrowed as the strange question was being posed to him Friday afternoon: Had Oakland’s 68-year-old coach considered that, in guiding the 14th-seeded Golden Grizzlies to a massive upset over No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament the night before, he’d effectively just added a line to his future obituary?
“Well, that is morbid,” he said with a laugh, “but it’s true. ‘He beat Kentucky.’ Wow, I didn’t think about that, but you’re right. You’re 100 percent right. Wow. And that might be the first thing they say when I’m gone. ‘Here lies Greg Kampe, who beat Kentucky.’ Huh. I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
The day before Oakland’s big victory, Kampe made an impassioned plea for mid-major programs to never be squeezed out of the NCAA Tournament, as some fear might soon happen. Because Cinderella is really the star of this show — and because if his team could somehow knock off Kentucky, he said, it would change their lives forever. He was right.
GO DEEPER
Oakland’s Jack Gohlke, the unlikely NCAA Tournament hero we never saw coming
“Jack Gohlke is a folk hero now,” Kampe said after the 24-year-old Division II transfer buried the Wildcats with a barrage of 10 made 3-pointers. By late afternoon the next day, Kampe said, “I have not been to sleep yet. I’ve not stopped talking. I talk a lot, but it’s getting ridiculous. Every 15 minutes, I’ve got a Zoom or something. This is unbelievable for our university, the amount of publicity. The university website crashed last night.”
Perhaps because an untold number of people in Louisville, home of Kentucky’s rival, bought $8,000 worth of T-shirts overnight.
“Think about that,” Kampe said. “Next year at the Kentucky game, all these Louisville fans will be wearing Oakland shirts.”
Less than 24 hours after his team’s historic victory, Gohlke had already appeared on “SportsCenter” with Scott Van Pelt and done the “Pat McAfee Show” and “Rich Eisen Show.” Kampe had done “Good Morning America.” Senior forward Trey Townsend, who had 17 and 12 against Kentucky, was scheduled for an interview with TMZ Sports. And name, image and likeness opportunities began popping up as Gohlke’s Instagram following ballooned from less than 1,000 to almost 20,000 overnight.
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“I try not to be a guy who’s on his phone all the time. So, honestly, I don’t even want to look at it right now,” Gohlke said. “Everyone told me I was blowing up, and it’s just kind of overwhelming. Dude, we were going into this game talking about those guys on Kentucky and what terrific players they are and how after this is over, they’re going to be signing a $25-30 million contract in the NBA and we’re going to be doing … whatever.”
Back at the hotel Thursday night, during a late meal together, one of Gohlke’s teammates discovered a viral tweet joking that UK’s many future pros just got cooked by a future insurance salesman. Everyone spontaneously began to serenade him to the tune of a famous State Farm commercial: “Like a good neighbor, Jack Gohlke’s there!”
“I almost choked on my food,” Kampe said.
“He’s up here right now,” teammate Cooper Craggs said, raising a hand above his head, “so we just gotta keep him down here with us. Just gotta bust him up a little bit to keep him humble. In our eyes, he’s not an insurance salesman, but we know that’s what it looks like to everybody else. At the end of the day, it’s all just great publicity for him and for us and for the school. This really has changed everyone’s lives. It’s changing Jack’s a little bit more than others, but just to be part of it is amazing.”
Gohlke is trying to keep a level head and said he’d rather wait until Sunday, after Oakland has hopefully clinched an unprecedented Sweet 16 appearance with a win over NC State, to answer all the calls, texts and NIL inquiries flooding his phone.
He wants to stay locked in on the task at hand, but also, “I never imagined having NIL opportunities, and I’ll take some money for sure.”
Kampe said he got 1,300 text messages from the end of the game Thursday through Friday morning, and he answered as many as he could between 2 and 4 in the morning — so nobody would be awake to reply and extend the conversation. “Now it becomes 2,600 messages,” he said. “I got it down to about 195. Now it’s back up to 495.”
If this had happened 15 years ago, said Kampe, who has been Oakland’s coach since 1985, a big NCAA Tournament upset might’ve changed his life much more than it has now.
“I’d be thinking, ‘Oh, this is great. How do I parlay it into a $5 million job?’ But that’s not gonna happen now,” Kampe said. “So you don’t even think that way. I’ve got three years left on my contract and maybe this gets me an extension for a couple more. What you think about now is the school you’ve spent 40 years trying to help and what this moment is doing for them.”
Keep winning, though, and everyone’s lives change even more. Two years ago, after 15-seed Saint Peter’s beat Kentucky, of all teams, the Peacocks just kept dancing. They made it all the way to an unfathomable Elite Eight. Kampe’s team wonders: Why not us?
“You know when you see these winning locker rooms on TV and they’re dancing and the coach is dancing and they’re throwing water? Didn’t happen in my locker room,” Kampe said. “Now, they’re elated. There were tears in their eyes. But nobody was dancing, because they have a great goal. They want to go to the Sweet 16. You can say it’s bulls—, a pipe dream, but we’re 40 minutes from it.”
The Golden Grizzlies are still playing with house money, too. They don’t need to win another game to go down in history. Gohlke has a guaranteed spot in One Shining Moment this year and Cinderella montages for years to come.
“Beating Kentucky is a thing they’ll have for the rest of their lives,” Kampe said. “They’re in Oakland basketball folklore now. Every five years, they’ll bring them back and throw a party for them.”
He’ll be there for those, until he isn’t. And when the time comes, his epitaph might well read: Here lies Greg Kampe, who beat Kentucky.
(Photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
