Oakland welcoming newly found popularity: ‘Been crazy’

• Brooke Pryor, ESPN Personnel WriterMar 22, 2024, 07:13 PM ET

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  • Previously covered the Kansas City Chiefs for the Kansas City Star and Oklahoma University for the Oklahoman.PITTSBURGH– Wearing a

yellow hat embroidered with a four-leaf clover from Black Clover’s”Live Lucky “line, Oakland coach Greg Kampe admitted he hadn’t slept since his No. 14 seed Grizzlies upset No. 3 seed Kentucky in the preliminary of the guys’s NCAA competition Thursday night.

“I have not been asleep yet,” Kampe said Friday at 3:45 p.m. “I have not been to bed and I have not been– I’ve not stopped talking. I like to talk, I yap, but it’s getting ludicrous. Every 15 minutes I have actually got a Zoom or something. However it’s actually cool and it’s great for Oakland.

“This is unbelievable for our university, the amount of promotion and since our kids are such fantastic kids, it’s positive publicity.”

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Overnight, Kampe stated, the university sold $8,000 worth of T-shirts to individuals living in Louisville, Kentucky, as they celebrated the death of their archrival.

“Sincere to God,” Kampe said. “You know, they buy the T-shirts and they put the charge card in and [it states] ‘Louisville, Louisville, Louisville.’ It wasn’t the same person.

“Next year when Louisville and Kentucky play, I don’t know if everyone is going to appear in an Oakland shirt or what. I have no concept. But it’s insane to think about what something like this does.”

Graduate transfer guard Jack Gohlke, who caught fire with a near-record 10 3-pointers in the win, is at the epicenter of the team’s newly found fame.

“It’s definitely been crazy,” Gohlke, 24, stated. “When I finally did open my phone, it was overwhelming, to state the least, which I certainly value all the assistance of all individuals sending me messages and things like that.”

Like his sharpshooting player, Kampe likewise had a flood of text after the game. Gohlke said he’s waiting a minimum of 48 more hours before responding to the bulk of them, but Kampe plowed through his inbox instead of sleeping– actively reacting to them in between 2 and 4 a.m.

“They can’t return them at that time,” Kampe said. “You have 1,300 text messages, and you do it in the middle of the afternoon, then they answer, then you have actually got to put a thumbs-up or a heart on it. And now it becomes 2,600 text messages. … From 1,300, I got it down to about 195. Now it’s back up to 495. Tonight I’ll be up at 2:00 in the early morning doing the rest of them.”

While Kampe was reacting to texts, NC State coach Kevin Keatts, now confronted with slowing Gohlke down, enjoyed movie in his hotel space and was impressed by what he saw.

“I believed Kentucky was winning the game by a big margin, due to the fact that I kept hearing the cheering, and I believed it was Kentucky fans,” Keatts said. “I got my phone and began searching for ball game, and obviously Oakland was winning.

“When I got back last night 2, 2:30 in the early morning, I popped the game on, started my hunting to prepare to prepare yourself for Oakland, and, guy, I don’t know that I’ve seen a shooting efficiency like that. If I have, it’s been a very long time. And people are going to say, man, goodness, Kentucky didn’t do a good task. They existed. I imply, he made shots after shots after shots.”

And Gohlke isn’t cooling off yet. During Friday’s practice, he drilled a near-full-court shot. Before he might go back to the locker room Thursday night, Gohlke went through an automobile wash of courtside interviews, pulling on headsets and holding microphones as he beamed along with his head coach.For Gohlke

, who invested the first five years of his career at Division II Hillsdale College and had 117 fans at the team’s local last a year ago, the crush of nationwide attention is surreal.

“I got back to the hotel. It was quite late, and I switched on the TV and I resembled, ‘Oh, I think I’ll check ESPN today,’ and I saw myself on Scott Van Pelt,” he stated. “That was quite cool.”

While Gohlke watched himself on ESPN, his teammates were glued to their phones, impressed as Gohlke’s Instagram follower count climbed to more than 22,000 in less than 24 hours.

“He had Antonio Brown and well-known individuals– simply in shock,” colleague DQ Cole stated. “It was just incredible to see. However we all knew this all along. We’ve been thinking in him considering that [the preseason journey to] Italy. We understand he can shoot the ball. We know that he can make any shot out there on the court.

“Our company believe in him. He thinks in us, and we’re going to continue to believe in him and he’s going to continue to think in us.”