Greg Kampe: "I Think We'll Be Able To Guard Them"

Oakland head coach Greg Kampe met with the media to discuss the NCAA Tournament second round matchup against NC State.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.

Coach, last night after the game Jack kind of said, he joked and said something along the lines of I took some threes maybe I shouldn't have and you just kind of laughed and shook your head. Do you disagree with that statement, and also kind of what is it as a coach that lets you let a player like that play with that kind of freedom to shoot as often as he does?
100 percent disagree with it. He hasn't taken a bad shot of his 380 that he's taken and what makes a coach do that is probably stupidity. I've always, on my best teams over the Division I years -- in the Division II days that's all we had was shooters. In the Division I days, you know, you can't win that way. So we always wanted to have two, and one had to be an unconscious shooter. And the reason they had to be an unconscious shooter is because my best players are always our post players. Score at the basket type guys. So how do you keep those guys from being doubled? You have a guy out there that's unconscious that will shoot anything. By the end of that game Kentucky had three guys on him and all of a sudden Trey Townsend goes from four points at halftime to 17, and if he had made his free throws like he normally -- I mean, he's an 80 percent free throw shooter that went four for nine. So he would have had over 20 points and that just opens it up and as much as I love the three, our offense's philosophy is the three is third. The first is layups, the second is free throws and the third is threes. We don't want to take twos. We want to take layups, free throws and threes. So to do that, if I can have a guy that's an unconscious guy that people think he's nuts. And they think Gohlke is that. They think he'll shoot any shot any way and he does. And he makes them. He can go miss four in a row and I've seen him do that, and I've seen him make four in a row. So yes I want him shooting it every time. He can't take a bad shot. Now, have I said to him, did we really need that one? Yeah. But he knows, if he doesn't take one, I'm going to scream at him.

Greg, you have been doing this a long time, but in the last 18 hours –
Why do we have to keep bringing all that up? 40 years.

40 years. In the last 20, 18 hours have you experienced anything that you've never experienced in your career before, any kind of surreal moments, pinch-me moments in the last little bit?
The rush of media kind of like this. I mean this is different because it's Kentucky, on the biggest stage. But our first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2005, we went into the league tournament as the 7 seed, maybe one of the worst seasons I've ever coached. We were 9 and 17 or something like that and we went and we won our conference tournament, we're going to the NCAA Tournament for the first time and when the airplane landed to get back to Detroit, in those days you could get by, the media could go anywhere. There was no TSA. And we get off the plane and we're walking and there's this barricade and all these cameras and all these people, and I said to my assistant, oh, my God, what happened at the airport? And it was all for us. And I was like, we were dumbfounded by it. I've never been in anything like that. And as an assistant I'd been to the Sweet 16 with Toledo. So I never had seen anything like that.

This is parallel to that. I have not been asleep yet. I have not been to bed and I have not been -- I've not stopped talking. I like to talk, I talk a lot, but it's getting ridiculous. Every 15 minutes I've got a Zoom or something. But it's really cool and it's great for Oakland. This is unbelievable for our university, the amount of publicity and because our kids are such great kids it's positive publicity.

Rocket Watts, you said, that pass was the play of the game to DQ Cole in the corner. I'm just curious, can you kind of explain a little bit about what he means to this team and where he's come from given that this kid started out as a big-time prospect at Michigan State and he ended up at Oakland taking on a completely different role? What does he mean to this team and can you take us through that specific play?
That's a hell of a question because we don't win last night without him. He didn't play in the conference tournament because of injury. He's been beset with injuries in his two years at Oakland. I know he's disappointed in that, the trajectory of his career, looked like an NBA one and done and all that kind of stuff. And now he's a really important role player. But he could be an important role player on a team that does something special. So maybe the trajectory isn't as bad as he thinks. And he's accepted it, and he's an unbelievable teammate. The players love him. I heard Gohlke at a press conference talking, not here, maybe it was the league tournament or somewhere that he was talking -- you know what, it was senior night. And he was telling everybody how he was telling all his people at Hillsdale that he's rooming with Rocket Watts and everybody thought that was unbelievable, you're rooming with Rocket Watts. So he's just a great kid that everybody loves, and last night was a special moment for him. I mean he got to the rim and made some big baskets for us when we were struggling, and then a selfish player that thinks they're really, really good and should shine in the moment would have shot a falling down shot there and instead he found DQ in the corner for maybe the biggest basket in Oakland history.

You say you haven't slept yet. I'm just checking if that's literally or figuratively. And also, when you have all this going on, how do you sort of set the tone that, I guess, 27 hours from now -- because you said yesterday that wasn't a fluke. This isn't just some Cinderella that popped off one day. You guys want to make a run. So how do you dial back in with all this going on?
Well, it's easy, because of how important it is, and we know what's going on. I mean, yeah, I haven't been to bed. I haven't slept. I got a job. This is -- I mean this is the most important time of the year in this job, and I'm lucky that -- what are there 32 teams left in the country doing it? And there's 360 coaches. So 300 coaches aren't doing it. So I better do it and I better do it well. I owe my players that.

I will say this, though. Between 2 and 4 in the morning I spent those two hours returning text messages because they can't return them at that time. You have 1300 text messages and you do it in the middle of the afternoon, then they answer, then you've gotta put a thumbs up or a heart on it. And now it becomes 2600 text messages. So I did that at 3in the morning so that those people wouldn't -- I didn't want to keep answering text messages. And I got it down from 1300, I got it down to about 195. Now it's back up to 495. So I gotta -- tonight I'll be up at 2:00 in the morning doing the rest of them.

In this day and age, Coach, how does a guy stay at one school for 40 years?
Stupidity, a great athletic director, a president, people that put up with you. Nobody else wants you. I mean, there is a lot of answers to that. Five became ten, ten became 20 and now it's 40 and everybody brings it up. I'm trying to low key that. I'm trying to tell people I started -- I got the job when I was 18. I don't know, man. I know this. I have a unique situation, a unique love for a university that's accepted me. I grew up with the university. We went from 9,000 students when I got there to 20. We went from a thousand on campus to almost 5,000 on campus. There's been a crane on our campus every year but the COVID year that I've been there. It's grown. It's an unbelievable campus, an unbelievable university. And it's getting the due that it needs now.

Our university website crashed last night. It crashed. I mean, that's what this does. We also sold $8,000 worth of t-shirts to Louisville last night. Think about that. Honest to God. You know, they buy the t-shirts and they put the credit card in and Louisville, Louisville, Louisville. It wasn't the same person. So I don't know. Next year when Louisville and Kentucky play, I don't know if everybody is going to show up in an Oakland shirt or what. I have no idea. But it's crazy to think about what something like this does.

I know you haven't had a lot of time, but what have you seen studying NC State, and what threats I guess, do they pose?
I've looked at every possession this season that they've played against zone. So not a lot of teams play zone. So that's good. Otherwise I'd be up three nights, I guess. It's going to be a completely different game plan than we had against Kentucky. At Kentucky we wanted them to catch the ball at 10 or 12 feet. We wanted them shooting from 10 or 12 feet. We didn't want them shooting threes. We did a great job of that until the last two or three minutes. Tomorrow night we can't let that -- the big dude get in there and catch the ball at 10 or 12 feet, otherwise I might have three guys with broken bodies before the game is over. So the game plan is going to be completely different. And the great thing about our zone is there's only so much you can do against a zone. If you're going to play Oakland, we've got 77 set plays. How many of those are you going to prepare for in one day? Against when you play zone, they can only do a few things, and we've seen it all. So we think we know what they're going to do. It's more of a personnel scout? All right, what does this guy do? We can't give him this. This guy only guys left. If he goes right, he's pulling up. If he goes left, he's going all the way. All those things, my staff watched all their games. I only cared about the zone. They're putting that together, you know, the personnel. And I got an unbelievable staff that does a great job. I think we're very well prepared, and I think we'll be able to guard them. It's going to come down to what team makes shots and who makes the plays when it counts.

You said yesterday you talked a lot -- or before yesterday you talked a lot about slowing the game down against Kentucky. There were points in the game where it looked like you wanted to run on the court and grab your players to slow them down yourself. Does that change tomorrow? Do you expect a more fast-paced game? Do you expect to let them go?
It's going to be a complete opposite game plan and the reason is they're playing their seventh game in 11 days. Who does that? I mean the pros don't even do that. Right? But because they're in a league with 400 teams they had to win five games to win their league championship. So they had to play five games in five days and turn around three days later and play, and two days after that play again. So what have we got -- if we're smart we're going to play fast, right? We want to make them run. That big dude is big! Right? And they got a lot of big dudes. We want to make them run. And at some point they're human, aren't they? I mean at some point it's gotta kick in, 7 games in 11 days. So if we can keep the pressure up and we get them to the point that their legs are tired, it's hard to make jump shots when your legs are tired, and to beat a zone you gotta make jump shots.

Would you be -- based on what happened at the end of the Kansas game last night. I don't know if you saw it. I know you were busy. Would you be -- there was a call at the rim that went against Sanford. Would you be interested in some sort of NBA-type model where you're able to challenge a call or calls in certain situations are up for review?
If I were them, I would say yes, obviously. If it happened to me, I would say yes. But, you know, man, we got way too many reviews as it is. I mean, it's almost a coaching strategy to ask for things so that you can get rest or you don't waste a timeout so you can get your guys together, and I'd hate to see the game even slow down more. I think one of the problems with our game is the last three minutes takes so long. As a coach I want it to take that long, but as a fan, I don't think I would.

So to answer your question, I would say no. I'd probably not be in favor of it. But I feel bad -- I'm a Detroit Tiger fan, right? And Armando Galarraga, whatever his name was, lost his perfect game because Jim Joyce made a bad call at first that today it would have been a perfect game. And Jim Joyce, the umpire said it before he died, the worst thing that ever happened to him in his career. Well, that referee probably feels the same way last night, right? So I mean, it's the human side of our sport, and I don't want to see that changed.

Coach, I gotta ask about your hat. Is there any significance with that? Is it your favorite hat.
It's a brand called Live Lucky, and God, I need to live lucky right now, right? So I wear these Live Lucky hats hoping it rubs off. Your brain is right there. So maybe it sneaks in a little bit. No, that's not Notre Dame, if that's what you're thinking about. I had somebody ask me, is that Notre Dame, and I said, who? Who?