Walsh Cavaliers get big kick out of 'beating the team (Oakland) that beat Kentucky'

Everybody wants a piece of the fun now that the Oakland Golden Grizzlies put fresh madness in March by stunning Kentucky.

The Canton area already had a piece.

Oakland, from north of Detroit, pulled off one college basketball's great stunners Thursday, winning 80-76 over a Kentucky team full of projected high NBA draft picks.

Oakland's 2023-24 journey began on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a 75-69 loss to the Walsh Cavaliers. The Oct. 19 preseason battle didn't count on either team's official record, but it went down like a real game, with a 7 o'clock tipoff and a crowd of 1,587.

Head coaches Jeff Young of NCAA Division II Walsh and Greg Kampe of NCAA Division I Oakland are old friends.

"I'm sure Greg was pissed," Young said. "It was a bad look. I told him, 'You'll get more out of that game than we will.' I'm sure in the practices after our game he had their attention.

"I'm not saying that's why they're having success, but I'm sure it was a wakeup call."

Last July, Kampe was in Canton as a charter enshrinee in the National High School Football Hall of Fame, on stage with a Canton icon, Don Nehlen, who coached him at Bowling Green.

More recently, Kampe blew through the city as a last-minute replacement speaker for the Hall of Fame Luncheon Club.

"I was told the guy who was supposed to speak cancelled," Young said. "They reached out to Greg, who had a game at Ohio State that night.

"He told them, 'Don't worry, I'll figure it out.' How many guys would do that at the last minute on a game day?"

Mark Miller was in the house for the speech, several hours before Kampe's Grizzlies lost 89-83 at Ohio State. Kampe was a relative unknown to the group but soon won it over with humor and stories from the road.

Miller — a former Canton South, Bowling Green and Cleveland Browns quarterback — returned to Stark County several years ago and has reconnected with locals as a high school football analyst for WHBC radio. He and Kampe were Bowling Green football teammates.

"Greg never lacked for confidence," Miller said. "He was a quarterback at first, but he was one of those really good athletes who could play a lot of positions. He was our punter after Donny Taylor from Oakwood graduated.

"He also played defensive back. He would come off football season and go right to the basketball team. He told me tackling people all fall ruined his shoulders.

"He was prolific basketball scorer at Defiance. He was a great football player, and he high jumped 6-foot-4.

"He didn't start for Bowling Green's basketball team. He was kind of a crazy man. The coach, John Weinert, used this 'second five' of little guys, including Greg, who would go in and just cause havoc. They became a fan favorite."

Miller and Kampe eventually became road roommates.

"I had never done laundry when I got there," Miller said. "Greg said, 'I'll teach you how.'

"We went to the laundromat across from the stadium. He said, 'Throw all your clothes in this big washer. I said, 'All of them? My mom separates them.' He said, 'No, no. Throw 'em all in there.'

"I did, and I wore pink jocks and T-shirts for quite a while. I was a little sore at him."

That irritation turned to concern in later years.

"Some years later he gained weight and was over 300 pounds," Miller said. "That was hard to believe on a 5-8 frame. He had some serious health problems. He had some surgeries, and the word got around former teammates — 'Hey, Kampe might not make it.'

"He got fixed up, lost weight. At the Luncheon Club, he wouldn't eat. He said, 'That's not part of my diet now.' He looks great and says he's going to coach for a long time."

It will be a long time — make that never — before Jeff Young forgets the Oakland-Kentucky game.

Walsh had a tremendous season, winning 24 games before a 74-72 loss to Lake Superior State last weekend in the Division II tournament. The Cavaliers set the tone by winning at Oakland.

Kobe Mitchell, a 6-foot-2 Walsh sophomore from Cadiz, sank nine 3-point shots and scored 32 points.

"The crazy part is I was 0 for 4 to start the gamne," Mitchell recalled on Friday. "All it takes is for a free throw or a layup to go in. After that confidence takes over. Once you get hot like that, the rim seems super big, and you just let it fly."

Oakland has been in Division I for more than half of Kampe's 40 seasons as head coach. He got blistered on Twitter as word about losing to Division II Walsh got around.

Kampe will vie for his 700th career win Sunday in a second-round game against North Carolina State. Young is pushing 500 career wins in a 21-year run as Walsh head coach. He played at Walsh shortly after the Bob Huggins era, which produced a parallel bit of basketball history.

In the 1992-93 season, an NAIA team from Hawaii, Chaminade, pulled off an epic upset by beating an uber-hyped Virginia team led by 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson, soon to be a No. 1 overall NBA draft pick.

That prompted Walsh to schedule a game against Chaminade (the Cavaliers won) in Canton Memorial Civic Center.

Oakland taking down Kentucky is by far the biggest story of the unfolding NCAA tournament.

"Of course I was watching," Young said. "Buddies were calling and asking, 'Didn't you guys beat Oakland?

"When Oakland was up early I was telling them, Kentucky wins by 20. I kept waiting for that 10-0 run by Kentucky. Oakland kept making big shot after big shot.

"They interviewed Kampe at halftime and he said, 'If we don't keep making 3s, we're not winning.' It was the same thing for us. If we didn't make 3s against them, we weren't winning."

Guard Jack Gohlke, a transfer from Hillsdale, stung Kentucky with 10 3-pointers.

"We faced Gohlke when when he was at Hillsale," Young said. "He came over and we talked during warmups. He was a really good kid."

Gohlke has made an NCAA-best 131 3-pointers this season. In the October meeting with Walsh, he took 13 shots, all behind the arc, and made five.

"I followed what they were doing as the season went along," Young said. "It turned into ... you beat Oakland, who just won the Horizon League. Then, you beat Oakland, who just won the Horizon League tournament. Now, it's you beat Oakland, who just beat Kentucky."

Kobe Mitchell, the Walsh star, said watching Oakland make history was cool but not incomprehensible.

"It was crazy to see Kentucky struggle like that, but we knew Oakland was a pretty good team that had a chance," he said. "Oakland has good size. Kentucky's edge mostly was in speed. Oakland did a really good job playing at the pace they wanted. Gohlke had a great game.

"When you have competitors like our team has, anytime you play you expect to win.

"Yeah, it's kind of big that Oakland beat Kentucky and we beat Oakland in the beginning of the season.

"I believe if me and my team were out there, we'd feel we could beat 'em, too. I just wish we were still playing in the tournament in our own division."

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Oakland and Jack Gohlke upset Kentucky but lost to Walsh Cavaliers