The day after Oakland University’s 80-76 win over the University of Kentucky (UK) Wildcats on Thursday, Oakland head coach Greg Kampe was made available to the media.
Although talking to the media is nothing new for Kampe, this time was different, as he had not slept a wink the previous night.
“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,” Kampe said.
Despite a night of no rest, Kampe recognizes how important this moment was for OU and how fortunate he is to still coach his team late into March.
Notably, the previous night, Kampe noted that the win against the Wildcats was the greatest win he’d been a part of.
“I mean, yeah, I haven’t been to bed. I haven’t slept. I got a job,” Kampe said. “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.”
A significant factor contributing to Kampe’s sleepless night includes the uncountable number of interviews he has given.
“Every 15 minutes, I’ve got a Zoom or something. But it’s really cool, and it’s great for Oakland,” Kampe said. “This is unbelievable for our university, the amount of publicity, and because our kids are such great kids, it’s positive publicity.”
However, this isn’t the first time Kampe has received a sizable amount of media attention.
Kampe recalls returning to Detroit following the Golden Grizzlies’ first appearance in March Madness in 2005 and comparing it to the attention the team received following their win against UK.
“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 seven seed… 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.”
In addition to the increase in media inquiries, Kampe has also dealt with an influx of text messages since the win.
Thankfully for Kampe, he has a secret tactic to ensure it doesn’t take too much time away from coaching.
“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,” Kampe said. “You have 1,300 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 2,600 text messages.
“So I did that at 3 in the morning so that those people wouldn’t — I didn’t want to keep answering text messages. And I got it down from 1,300, I got it down to about 195. Now it’s back up to 495. So I gotta — tonight I’ll be up at 2 in the morning doing the rest of them.”