Pewaukee's Jack Gohlke talks about his March Madness fame, who helped with NIL deals and what's next

Jack Gohlke kept splashing three-pointers, each one probably waking Italians from their midnight slumber.

Grant Basile doesn't imagine his neighbors were too thrilled with him as he watched his former Pewaukee High School teammate rise into the American consciousness, hitting 10 triples as Oakland stunned Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, 80-76.

Basile, who's been close friends with Gohlke since grade school, plays professionally for Orzinuovi, outside of Milan, and was "screaming at my computer" as the game ended at 2 a.m. his time.

"A lot of my buddies were actually at the game; there were 10 of them that went," Basile said Monday. "We were all up texting. I had to go for a walk to calm down. I couldn't get calm again. I was probably more nervous than I've ever been for a game."

Basile was able to FaceTime with Gohlke afterward, which was no small feat. After Gohlke's 32-point performance off the bench, everyone wanted to know more about the shooter who was at NCAA Division II Hillsdale College the previous five seasons.

Gohlke appeared on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt among his siege of interviews, and a barrage of messages had basically left him without a phone.

"I didn't even open my phone; I knew it was going to blow up," Gohlke said Sunday, after his team's NCAA journey ended in a heartbreaking overtime loss to North Carolina State, 79-73. "I had unlimited messages, and I couldn't go through it. I was getting a lot of DMs, NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) opportunities, and I was like, 'I can't do this right now. We're trying to win another game.' I don't want to shift my focus from the most important basketball games of my life to this thing."

How Jack Gohlke tried to balance capitalizing on the moment with sponsor deals but stay focused on the next game

That's where Basile could help. In the still-evolving era of Name, Image and Likeness, the playbook for capitalizing on sudden fame (and remaining focused on a shot at the Sweet 16) was still in development.

"Grant has been my right-hand man, and he had some free time," Gohlke said. "I said, 'Do you mind kind of combing through this stuff for me and see what we're working with?' He's been my makeshift agent the past two days. I had another buddy helping me as well. It was a rag tag group of guys, and they've done a good job. They made it so all I had to do was make a video and do the post and keep my mind on the game."

Even before Gohlke hit six more three-pointers against North Carolina State, setting an NCAA record for most three-pointers in a player's first two tournament games (16), Gohlke had produced a short social-media video for TurboTax.

By the end of the weekend, he'd also recorded a video for OOfos slides with teammate Trey Townsend, the Horizon League player of the year, clearly recorded in the same hotel hallway as the TurboTax video. He also had arranged an ad with Buffalo Wild Wings.

It was all new terrain for a player who'd spent five seasons playing Division II basketball and came off the bench for a healthy chunk of the year in Oakland, albeit as a player who saw the third-most minutes on the team.

"When I talked to him after the game, he said he was super-overwhelmed and didn't want to focus on any of this," Basile said. "He was locked into getting to Dallas (for the South Regional semifinals). He probably spent less than 15 minutes total worrying about any of (the NIL stuff)."

Basile, working with a six-hour time difference in Italy, and another former teammate, Ben Miller, worked to quickly establish an email address for inquiries. They were able to triage the inquiries and find things they knew Gohlke would like.

"I had a little bit of (exposure to NIL) when I was at Virginia Tech, so I knew how it worked, but nothing to Jack's magnitude being the biggest star of March," Basile said. "We were laughing pretty hard about it. It's pretty easy when everyone's reaching out to you and you don't have to seek any of it out."

The Jack Gohlke memes were indeed spectacular, and not completely inaccurate

There's at least some truth to the memes that sprouted up in the aftermath of Gohlke's success — that the 24-year-old looked more like an insurance salesman or a history teacher than a basketball player. He is, after all, getting his master's in business administration at Oakland.

"He's a super-smart kid and had an accounting internship the last couple summers at Hillsdale, so it's not far off-brand," Basile said. "He's got an accounting degree, so the TurboTax thing is pretty funny. When his basketball career is over down the line, (tax preparation) is probably not going to be too far off."

But there is still a basketball career to consider. Gohlke said he's close to settling on an agent and expects to land some tryouts and opportunities to continue playing somewhere.

Gohlke said that, while the Kentucky game had an unparalleled stage, it's not even the best he's felt shooting the ball in his career. He thinks he'd give that distinction to a game at Hillsdale when he was 9-of-12 in the second half from three — "The hoop was an absolute ocean" — or perhaps a game with Oakland against IUPUI earlier this year.

"In the Kentucky game … I mean, it's Kentucky, and I just wanted to seize the moment as much as I possibly can," Gohlke said. "The way they were guarding our team, they weren't going to let our bigs beat them that day, and I was going to have to make shots."

He did have a few small DI offers after he graduated from Hillsdale but, even before he told the Hillsdale coaching staff that he considering taking a graduate year elsewhere, his coach had already reached out to Oakland coach Greg Kampe about Gohlke.

"I knew I wanted to transfer and get my MBA and have another year of basketball, jump up to DI and prove myself there," Gohlke said. "The fit really worked out extremely well. Coach Kampe does a great job of utilizing players in their role."

More: Jack Gohlke joins ESPN's Pat McAfee after Oakland's historic March Madness win over Kentucky

More: Who is Jack Gohlke? Get to know Oakland's NCAA Tournament hero from Pewaukee

After Oakland's win, Gohlke's press conferences and interviews sounded like someone who expected to be there.

"I think it's just I've always been a competitive guy," Gohlke said. "Ever since I was young I was … always good at basketball but always kind of in between. Being a good player, but never great. I always wanted to chase that and get to that point. When I was younger, it was more of a comparison thing. I need to be as good as Tyler Herro, Tyrese Haliburton … but once I got older, it morphed into, 'I need to be the best version of myself as I can be.'

"I'm not going to be an NBA lottery pick and I'm OK with that. That's just not how it works all the time. My second or third year (at Hillsdale), I kind of locked in and worked as hard as I possibly can so I could be happy with it and know that I put in the effort that was worth it."

After redshirting, then playing fewer than five minutes per game in each of his next two seasons at Hillsdale, he became a regular and scored 9.6 points per game in 2021-22, then 14.2 points per game in 2022-23. He was at 13.1 this year with Oakland, but always with the potential for a three-point barrage.

He finished with a mere 22 points in the loss to N.C. State — already a March Madness legend but short of the Dallas regional, where his team would have played hometown Marquette University.

Basile said Gohlke had been talking about getting to Dallas even before the Kentucky game.

"I wanted that game so bad," Gohlke said.

The Pewaukee network helped prepare Jack Gohlke for his biggest moment

Grant's father, Mike Basile, still coached the Pewaukee boys basketball team when the two were seniors in 2018, and he maintains regular communication with Gohlke. Mike Basile even traveled to Indianapolis to watch Oakland in the Horizon League tournament, where the Golden Grizzlies defeated UW-Milwaukee in the championship game.

"I can honestly say I haven't really seen him rattled yet," Mike Basile said of Gohlke. "He showed a little of himself in that Kentucky game, but I don't often see the emotion. You don't know if things are bad or good; he's an even-keeled kid."

Mike watched the Oakland-Kentucky game from inside a Las Vegas sportsbook.

"There weren't too many people in there (during the game) who didn't know I coached Jack in high school," Mike said with a laugh.

The connection between families has extended to training. Grant and Jack have often worked together with another Pewaukee alumnus, Carroll University coach Taylor Jannsen.

"Some of those (off-balance) shots (Gohlke) shoots, I watch Taylor put him through every single workout," Grant said. "That's the kind of thing he's shooting on a daily basis with his workouts. A lot of times, it's me standing there with the hand, giving him the contest he's looking for."

Basile and Gohlke have a similar career arc in that they spent a full career at one school, then transferred for their final season. Before a single year at Virginia Tech, Basile began his career at Wright State, winning a First Four game over Bryant in 2022 before falling to top-seeded Arizona. Basile led his team with 21 points in the latter game, but Wright State lost, 87-70.

He's in the first season of a three-year contract with Tortona and on loan to Orzinuova, where he's gotten big minutes but the team has struggled to win.

"The team's not having as much success as we hoped … but I've been fortunate to play pretty well myself," he said. "It's a good experience to get that development and learn the game over here. Just being my first year, the European rules are a little different, and it's a good experience."

He's familiar with the process should Gohlke aim to play overseas, with the market likely to develop starting in June.

"He's not quite sure where he wants to end up — maybe the G-League, or whatever he thinks is the best opportunity," Grant said. "Despite all the memes, that he'll be a high-school history teacher tomorrow … that game was not just a one-time thing. He's had a couple games like that. I don't know how many high-school games where he's hit 10 threes, but it's nothing new.

"He still has a big career ahead of him. People got to see what I've been fortunate to witness first-hand last 15 years of my life."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jack Gohlke on his March Madness fame, NIL deals and what's next