Meet Greg Kampe
-Experience: 30th season
-College: Bowling Green, ’78
-Career record: 506-366 (.580)
2013-14 Season Outlook
-In the Golden Grizzlies first-season in the Horizon League, the squad is predicted to finish fourth in the Preseason Poll.
-Finished the 2012-13 season with a record of 16-17 (10-6 Summit League). Oakland participated in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT), losing to Youngstown State in the First Round 99-87.
Career Background
-Kampe is the third-longest tenured coach in NCAA Division I (1984-present).
-Led Oakland to six championships in 14 seasons in The Summit League, including three NCAA Tournaments (2005, '10, '11).
-Became the fifth active Division I coach to win 500 games at one school.
-Earned a league-best five Coach of the Year accolades in the Summit League.
-Took over the program in 1984. The NCAA Division II school competed in the GLIAC. Oakland then moved to Division I in 1997 and joined the Summit League in 1999. The school officially joined the Horizon League on July 1, 2013.
-Prior to joining Oakland, Kampe was an assistant at Toledo from 1978-84.
Oakland is predicted to finish in fourth-place according to the Horizon League Preseason Poll. With this being the Golden Grizzlies first year in the Horizon League, what are your expectations for your team?
I don’t think you can have expectations when you don’t know what you’re getting in to. We want to be the best that we can be-- individually and as players-- and compete at the highest level. I know that is cliché-ish, but that’s really all we can do. I know if we were still in our other league (Summit League) I’d probably have an All-League player at every position. How does that relate to in the Horizon League, I don’t know.
Oakland has one of the most prolific shooters in the country in Travis Bader. How impressed are you with his progression as a basketball player?
First of all, let’s get this thing right. We don’t have shooters, we have makers. There are lots of guys who shoot it, but Travis is a maker. When we got Travis we were the only Division I school to offer him a scholarship. He was 6-foot-0 155 pounds and he’s now 6’5” 195 pounds; you don’t do that unless you have a great work ethic. Travis gets in the gym everyday twice per day, and that doesn’t include when I have him. He’s in the gym at 6:00 a.m. and he’s in the gym at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., shooting shot after shot after shot. We ask our players in the offseason to make 30,000 shots; Travis made 45,000 shots in the summer.
Oakland and Detroit are located roughly 25 miles from each other. With both schools now in the same league, what are your thoughts on restarting the rivalry?
I’ve been very vocal about the recent history between Oakland and Detroit. The funny thing is if you go back to the Division II days we played Detroit a lot. We never won at Detroit but had some great games there. There was a history there, and there was a friendly history. We might win 31-games, but if that were to happen (loose to Detroit twice) I wouldn’t think we had a successful year.
You’re active on Twitter (@KampeOU) and tweet about everything from basketball to baseball, to a picture of a 2-by-6-by-10 going through the front window of your truck. What’s the best thing about Twitter?
I went into Twitter kicking and screaming and saying I’d never do it and now my Administrator thinks I’m addicted to it. I use it for a way to get the word out but I also use it for enjoyment and comedy. For me, I would much rather tweet something funny. You’re never going to see me tweet ‘we had a good practice.’ I try not to be self-serving in it; I just want to have fun with it.
In your days at Bowling Green you were the only student-athlete in Mid-American Conference history to make the All-Academic team in both football and basketball. How important is it for your players to be both student and athletes?
That’s the model, that’s what we’re all about at the quote mid-major level. I listened to Commissioner (LeCrone) talk and that is the message he sent very clear, no question. Character, integrity, those are things this conference stands for, and we’d like to think that’s what we’ve always stood for at Oakland. I think I lived it as a player 1,000 years ago, and I think I’ve lived it as a coach. People that know our program understand academics and all of the things that go into making a person a good person is what our program is about.
Under your direction 27 players have gone on to play professional ball, including two (Rawle Marshall and Keith Benson) in the NBA. How have you found so much success in developing players to be successful at the next level?
I would say if you asked me what are you good at, I’d say my best assets as a coach is developing individual talent. I’ve had great staffs that have done a great job of getting kids better. I think I’m good at that because of my personality, not because of knowledge; my personality is I don’t care. You’re going to do this, I don’t care if you like me or don’t like me, I promised you that you were going to get better. I bring that every day and I believe my staff brings that every day.
Through 29 seasons you find yourself 21st among active Division I coaches for most career wins (506), which puts you just behind Bill Self. What’s it like to think about the success you’ve had at Oakland?
Because this is my 30th year, there has been a lot of talk about looking back and talking about the best players and the best teams and all of those things. I just feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to survive at one place and I can go to work and I know everybody from the guy that cleans the floors to the guy that is the Chief of Police, I don’t just know but I have a long-term relationship with these people. It makes coming to work every day great.
You've coached Oakland as a Division II school (1984-1997), through the transitional period (1997-99), as a member of The Summit League (1999-13), and now as a Horizon League member (2013-present). How was the school grown and evolved in your 29-plus years?
The word 'change' describes our University. When I first got there we were 10,000 students, now we have 20,000 students. The amount of buildings; a billion dollars worth of buildings have been built on campus in the 29-plus years I’ve been there. The school itself has had some great Presidents and great Vice Presidents and the leadership has always been upward and onward. We’re building something special here and we’ve stood parallel to that as an athletics program in this unbelievable growth and now we’re in one of the ten best conferences in the country.
You spent time as an assistant at Toledo from 1978-84 before accepting the head job at Oakland in 1984. If you wouldn’t have gotten into coaching, where would Greg Kampe be right now?
I like to write, I’ve actually written a novel that I’m trying to get published. If and when this ends, that would be what I would pursue, writing more. I really enjoy that, I enjoy storytelling, everyone knows I like telling stories.
If there’s one thing Horizon League hoops fans should expect from Oakland, what is it?
On the court stand point, you’re going to see a bunch of guys running down the court and firing it up and we have some guys that can put it in. We’re going to score points, everybody tells me we aren’t in this league and that it’s a big, strong defense minded league. We’ll see, time will tell if we’re right or they’re right, but I can tell you we aren’t going to stop and change.
Tags: Oakland - Men's Basketball
