Oakland’s Kampe, 68, excited to be back in tournament

Greg Kampe accepted his first head coaching job years before Tom Izzo, Mark Few, Roy Williams or Jay Wright ran their own programs.

And while Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim were winning national championships, Kampe was putting his signature on Oakland University’s program.

Forty years after first arriving on Oakland’s campus near Detroit, the 68-year-old Kampe returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 13 seasons as Division I’s coaching dean.

“I think there’s a lot of people that wanted me to (step away),” Kampe said when asked if ever considered departing during the school’s NCAA tourney drought. “I had some great teams. I’ve had five NBA players and three of them didn’t make (the tourney). That’s how special these guys are. I mean we lost four years in a row on a last-second shot.”

Actually, they lost three times in the final minute from 2016-19, but the point remains the same. Earning a ticket to March Madness can be an elusive, frustrating exercise, especially for one-bid leagues.

Kampe believes some of those dozen teams that missed out on tourney time were deserving of bids in the 68-team field. Then again, such wisdom often comes time.

Just how long has Kampe coached?

Walt Hazzard of UCLA, Bob Huggins of Akron, Joey Meyer of DePaul and Bob Valvano at St. Francis (New York) were in the same rookie class as Kampe and he outlasted all of them.

He’s been around so many years that he coached Skip Townsend in the 1980s and now Skip’s son, Trey, is this year’s star player and Horizon League Tournament MVP.

“”I think Kampe’s softened up over the years, but he still knows what it takes to win,” Trey Townsend said.