This is what happens when a top-four seed takes care of business in the opening round. When your name is Auburn or Kentucky, you are boarding flights home, after being upset by Yale and Oakland, respectively.
That was Oakland, Michigan on your scorecard, for the record.
The Grizzlies, champions of the one-bid Horizon League, took a 46-45 lead on a three pointer from Trey Townsend with 14:38 remaining in the second half.
Kentucky never tied or led again.
Oakland had three regular season wins against the Mid American Conference (Bowling Green, Marshall, and Eastern Michigan), and also won against Xavier out of the Big East. On the year, Oakland finished 24-11 overall, and 15-5 in the Horizon League. Their toughest win in the conference tournament was a 74-71 win over Cleveland State in the semifinals, as the Grizzlies dispatched Milwaukee by 13 in the championship game.
Led by Jack Gohlke’s 10 three pointers, the Grizzlies held on for an 80-76 win over the third-seeded Wildcats, who lost in the first round for the second time in three years. Last year, Kentucky went out in the second round, and have not made it to the second weekend since a trip to the Elite Eight in 2019.
Gohlke finished with a game-high 32 points, and was one off the NCAA record for made threes by a single player in tournament history. The win gave the Grizzlies their first in the first round, as their only other win in NCAA Tournament history was a 2005 Play In game against Alabama A&M. Top-seeded North Carolina smoked Oakland by 28 two nights later.
Head coach Greg Kampe is in his 40th season at Oakland, and has 670 career wins. This was easily the sweetest of them all. “This is the holy grail for mid-majors, right? It is.” The talk of expanding the field to 80 or 96 would deny moments like this on the opening weekend that so many sports fans look forward to every March.
Townsend, the Horizon League Player of the Year, added 17 points to Gohlke’s 32, embodying the “next man up” mentality that all teams have with the “win or go home” format of the tournament. The win would have been more convincing had Oakland converted their free throws, shooting a season-worst 56.5-percent from the line against the Wildcats.
The Grizzlies made up for it by committing only seven turnovers.
Kentucky head coach John Calipari also slammed the idea of expanding the tournament earlier in the week. He may want to change his tune after all the early exits the last decade. Kentucky has not made a Final Four since 2015. Calipari has led the Wildcats to four Final Fours in his 15 seasons as head coach, including two trips to the National Championship game, and the 2012 title.
For a coach with more than 400 wins and a National Championship, Calipari has become the epitome of a vocational instructor. Kentucky is a one-and-done basketball school, who have become even more hated by college basketball fans upon the introduction of NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness).
The Wildcats used to be all about getting the best freshman possible, only to see them jump to the NBA after the season. Now, Calipari has actually entertained the idea of using Kentucky’s NIL money to go get transfer students, essentially trying to turn the program into an all-star team.
Oakland matches up with an equally scrappy North Carolina State team on Saturday that went on a Cinderella run of their own through the ACC tournament to earn an 11-seed. The Wolf Pack pulled off their own first round upset of 6-seeded Texas Tech on Thursday.
Winner heads to Dallas in the Sweet 16.
-JC24