PITTSBURGH — The world has its eyes on the college basketball world right now and on Oakland University.
Already, the 2024 NCAA tournament has featured some great upsets, but perhaps none better than No. 14 seed Oakland beating No. 3 seed Kentucky Thursday night.
The Grizzlies' defeat of Kentucky also has some special significance for northwest Ohio as they are led by northwest Ohio native Greg Kampe.
Since the win, life for Kampe and Oakland has been a whirlwind.
"It's just crazy, I haven't been asleep yet. I'm living on Diet Dr Pepper and 5-hour Energy's," Kampe said. "I've probably done more media in the last 12 hours than I did all year combined. At the same time, we're trying to get ready for NC State and trying to make this dream live longer."
Kampe was a star football and basketball player at Defiance High School in the early 1970s. He went on to play both sports at Bowling Green State University and punted for the football team.
Kampe still holds the record for the longest punt in school history at 77 yards.
After college, he went on to work as an assistant for Bob Nichols and the University of Toledo's men's basketball team for six years. In his first season with Toledo, the team went to the Sweet 16. In their second season, the Rockets won the inaugural MAC Tournament.
Then in 1984, he took the head coaching job at Oakland, which at the time was a Division II school.
Forty years later, Kampe is still manning the sidelines for the Golden Grizzlies, with perhaps his greatest win coming at the NCAA tournament over blue-blood Kentucky.
Kampe and his team are the darlings of the tournament, but he still remembers his northwest Ohio roots.
"Defiance, Ohio is my home and it's always been my home. I'm proud of it. I talk about Defiance all of the time, I call it the point guard capital of the world," Kampe said. "The whole triangle of northwest Ohio is my whole life until the 40 years I've spent here. It's very meaningful to me and I still keep in touch with people there and blessed that I had that lifelong experience."
Oakland will play NC State on Saturday at 7:10 p.m. as the Grizzlies look to advance to the Sweet 16. The game can be watched on TBS.