Faces May Change, But Same Challenging Schedule for Oakland

Let’s take a look at the Horizon League preseason ballot of Oakland coach Greg Kampe, and how he predicts the teams to finish. Never mind who he picks 1 through 8. Jump down to No. 9, and last place.

Uh, it’s Oakland. His team. So much for favoritism. It’s like a father voting against his daughter’s alto performance on American Idol.

“I think we deserved it,” he said. “We finished fifth last year, and we have a lot of question marks.”

When a man’s been on the job for 30 years and won 519 games, he can afford to be candid. Besides, the Golden Grizzlies have a way of climbing the standings.  They might have gone 7-9 last year in their first cruise through the Horizon League, but Kampe noted he lost four players before the first game.

Oakland does have challenges. It’s a fact, that Travis Bader, the most prolific 3-point shooter in NCAA history, is gone. So is noted ball thief Duke Mondy.
Also, promising redshirt freshman guard Nick Daniels broke his left foot – just like he did his right foot last year -- and will be out for maybe two months. And just the other day in practice, two players ran into one another. Concussions and stitches all around.

If he thought about all that long enough, Kampe might have picked his team to finish 10th. “We’re down to the fumes already,” he said. “You can’t have that happen.”

But Oakland does return 6-10 Corey Petros, who is a load inside with a 13.3 scoring and 8.2 rebound average. Also guard Kahlil Felder and his 212 assists.

Also forwards Dante Williams and Tommie McCune, who saw a lot of minutes, Bader’s replacement should be Max Hooper, who arrived in Oakland via Harvard and St. John’s. Kampe has been pursuing him for eons.

“We recruited him three times,” Kampe said. “We recruited him out of high school and he chose Harvard. Then he got to Harvard and realized he wants to be a basketball coach and not a rocket scientist, so he left and we recruited him. Then he went to St. John’s. Then he realized Travis Bader was getting 11 3’s a game and he was getting about three. So we finally got him.”

Now Kampe is hoping all’s well that ends well, because Oakland can use the added firepower. He anticipates no retreat from the usual rollicking offense. Someone always seems to show up to make it hum. Kampe predicted six different players will lead Oakland in scoring in a game this season.

“We always have somebody averaging 18 points game. We always have somebody get a lot of rebounds. The faces change and the names change,” he said. “But if we’ve recruited properly, then our system takes care of itself.”

It had better, because the serial killer scheduler has been at it again. The man can’t help himself. Kampe said last season that maybe he should dial down his habit of a brutal non-league slate.
  
Right. In December, Oakland will visit Michigan State, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Clemson and Maryland in 14 days. That’s not a busy fortnight, that’s a death march.
   
At least the Golden Grizzlies have six early home games to get settled. Last year, they opened at North Carolina, UCLA, California and Gonzaga. No surprise, the 0-7 start (and 21-14 finish).
   
“Every year at some point I’ll say to myself, `Tell me again why I’m doing this,” he said. “Then I go ahead and do it again the next year.”
   
In the end, he understands why. The school makes money, the competition gets his team ready for the league, and his players love the experience.
   
“Those other kids were recruited ahead of us, so we want to compete against them,” Petros said. “We always play harder and we always look forward to those games because it builds excitement and it builds confidence in ourselves. If we can compete with them, we can compete with anybody in the country.”
   
Occasionally, they bring down a giant.   “I don’t look at us as the Washington Generals,” Kampe said. “It’s part of who we are.”
   
Besides, after three decades, Kampe figures his job does not ride on a few non-conference games. Presumably. “I don’t care what our (non-conference) record is. I have a new president and a new AD. They might care, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going to find out this year.
   
“Our kids want to play those games. I don’t know what the answer is. I know this league is a lot tougher and wins are hard to come by. The thing we found out last year is there is no easy game in this league. That wasn’t the case where we came from. Did that non-league scheduling hurt us last year? Yeah, it did.
But the thing that hurt us more was losing four players before the first game was ever played.”
  
Surely, that won’t happen again. The program is too solid and the offense too vibrant for Oakland to go away. Any final thoughts on that last-place prediction, Coach?
   
“I’d better be wrong.”

(By: Mike Lopresti)