After years of heartbreak, euphoria is now washing over the Oakland basketball program. But the Grizzlies may not be done.
Few coaches in college basketball understand the reality of one-bid leagues quite like Greg Kampe.
Kampe has walked the sidelines for Oakland basketball for the last 40 seasons. He spent 15 years guiding the Golden Grizzlies through the Division II ranks. Since making the jump to Division I in 1999, he has navigated leagues where reaching the sport’s biggest stage depends almost entirely on winning the conference tournament.
Those tournaments can produce some of the happiest moments that March has to offer as teams punch their Big Dance tickets. For Oakland, however, they’ve more often ended in heartbreak.
As one of the winningest coaches in college hoops, the 68-year-old Kampe knows just how hard it is to survive a single-elimination tournament in a one-bid league. It’s why the Grizzlies haven’t been in the NCAA Tournament since 2011.
“Winning a conference tournament is very difficult to do,” Kampe told Heat Check CBB.
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That pressure doesn’t just fall on the players, though. The coaches feel it, too. That much was evident when Oakland finally cut down the nets as Horizon League champions on March 12.
“The pressure of winning is immense for every player involved, and you see some big mistakes in tournament games as a result. The NCAA Tournament is one of the greatest sporting events in the world, and they have a chance to be part of it. But they have to win three games in March,” Kampe continued. “Everything they do the whole year, every time they practice, every time they work out, there’s talk about ‘We’re going to the tournament,’ ‘How do we get to the tournament?’, ‘We’ve got to be part of this’ … that builds pressure on them.”
In that moment, emotions flooded the man who may as well be renamed Mr. Oakland.
“My first reactions when we won were euphoria for our kids and then euphoria for the people in the stands,” Kampe recalled. “Then, as the confetti fell down and I was just walking, there was a lot of relief.”
But it’s more than just euphoria and relief washing over Kampe and his program.
“I’ve been part of the Oakland community for so long, and to see the celebration, the tears and the hugs, there is nothing else like it in the world,” the coach said. “To experience it, you just have to step back from it and be thankful.”
One-bid leagues: It just means more?
Mid-major conference tournaments are often overshadowed by their bigger counterparts. It makes sense: The top-tier leagues have more frills, more network backing, and more Top 25 numbers next to the team names. But by and large, high-major teams already know their NCAA Tournament fates going into those events. Very few are truly sitting on the bubble, which cuts into the excitement.
In one-bid leagues like the Horizon, though, every team is on the bubble. One wrong move, even for a regular-season champion, could be the needle that pops you.
It’s a tough spot for any team, and the letdown can be earth-shattering when it goes the wrong way.
“Fans get mad when you get beat in tournaments, but they don’t understand … while they might be mad, it’s devastating to the players because the only thing they want to do is play in the NCAA Tournament,” Kampe explained.
“It’s the holy grail for basketball players and coaches.”
And for teams like Oakland that do make it to the Big Dance, it just means more. People know Duke. They know Kansas. The mid-majors? Not so much.
“Think about what happens this coming Sunday all across the country. People who never even watch basketball will have brackets and be in a pool,” Kampe said. “They will read your name when they fill out their bracket and talk about who can be the upsets and what great players are in the tournament. Kids want to be part of that.”
Now, for the first time in over a decade, Kampe gets to share that experience with a new group.
“As I’ve told our players, there will never be anything else like this in your life, so just enjoy it. Embrace it and enjoy it,” he said. “Your hard work got you here, now let’s just enjoy it.”
Before the euphoria came heartbreak.
That enjoyment might be a tad sweeter after all the recent heartbreak for Oakland.
The Grizzlies finished in the top five of the Horizon League eight times between 2015 and 2023, but they never once earned the conference’s automatic bid. In three consecutive seasons from 2017 to 2019, Oakland lost by exactly one point in the league tournament. Star players such as Kay Felder and Kendrick Nunn came through the O’rena but left without the chance to play on the biggest stage.
The whole ordeal haunted Kampe for years.
“I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights in the last decade, asking myself, ‘What mistake did I make to cost these young men a chance to make the tournament?’” Kampe admitted. “That rips your heart out. So, as I stepped back after this championship win, there was relief for sure.”
The heartbreak wasn’t limited to just the long-standing head coach, either. Many of the players on this year’s team have also felt that pain.
‘They wanted to finish this.’
Trey Townsend and Blake Lampman, the team’s longest-tenured veterans, suffered their first taste of Horizon tourney heartache in 2021 when Oakland lost in the title game. That loss was especially frustrating for Townsend and Lampman, who have long shared the goal of taking their home-state Grizzlies back to the Big Dance.
But after years of falling short of that goal, the duo made it happen in their final go-around.
“It means the world to them because they’ve experienced heartbreak,” Kampe said of his veterans. “They experienced one step away (in 2021) and didn’t get it done. Then, we lost in the quarterfinals last season because we didn’t earn home-court advantage. As a result, they understood coming into the year how important getting the home court is, and they did that with the regular-season title.”
Earning home-court advantage was only part of the battle, though. Oakland still had to get itself over a hump that seemingly grew larger every year.
“Once they got to the championship game again, they knew they had been there already,” Kampe explained. And while they might have recognized how the story started, this group was determined to pen a much better finish.
“They didn’t want to lay on the floor in the locker room with tears,” he said. “They wanted to finish this.”
Can this storybook tale turn into a Cinderella story?
Oakland’s journey to the NCAA Tournament was a storybook trip in many ways.
Townsend, for instance, is the son of two former OU basketball players. He has been around the program for the entirety of his life. The 6-6 forward averaged 16.9 points and 7.8 rebounds in conference play, and he capped off his Horizon League career with 38 points in the championship game. To see a lifer like Townsend explode in such a big moment was remarkable for everyone involved.
“He has taken the mantle of ‘I’m going to be the best player in this league and take this team and lead it to the promised land,'” Kampe said of Townsend. “He’s taken that dream and idea seriously and believes in himself. He’s worked his tail off to get here.”
Meanwhile, as Townsend has blossomed into a star, Oakland has been busy collecting an elite group of shooters around him. The pairing of Lampman and offseason addition Jack Gohlke gives the Grizzlies two threats that opponents must respect at all times. Gohlke, in particular, does his best work beyond the arc. The former D-II sniper has attempted 327 of his 335 shots from deep this season and has hit four or more 3-pointers on 15 occasions. On the defensive side, few teams in the country will be ready to deal with the Grizzlies’ unique zone.
For Kampe, though, the makeup of this team is what makes it special.
“I just think there is a toughness to this team that is the calling card,” he said. “It’s not like we dominated and blew teams out this year. We always hung around to give ourselves a chance to win, and more often than not we found a way to win.”
In addition to being tough, this unit has grown more and more cohesive ever since spending part of its offseason playing overseas.
“Our trip to Italy over the summer formed a tremendous bond. They really care about each other and are unselfish,” Kampe explained. “That is why they won (the league tournament). They believed they would win, and one mistake never became two.”
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With toughness and togetherness, Oakland has made it this far. Winning the league and capturing the conference tournament crown are tremendous achievements. Nevertheless, the Grizzlies still have more on their minds.
“One of the things I really want to accomplish before my time is over here is to make a Sweet 16,” Kampe revealed. “It’s important to me to have another opportunity at that. You can’t talk about wanting to reach the Sweet 16 without making the tournament.”
Kampe missed out on the second weekend in Oakland’s previous appearances in 2005, 2010 and 2011. Over the next decade, he became more focused on simply getting his team back to the tournament.
“When you make the tournament three times in seven years, those are the dreams you have,” Kampe said of making the Sweet 16. “But when you go 12 years without getting in, those thoughts go away.”
With Oakland’s NCAA Tournament drought finally broken, Kampe can let his mind wander once again.
“Now that we’re back in, those thoughts and dreams are back.”