At a time when the culture of college sports enables and promotes transience more than ever before, behold: Greg Kampe.
On Tuesday night, Kampe, a man who has stuck with and guided one program for 40 of his 68 years on this earth, stuck with and guided his team to its 23rd win of this season and the 698th win of his career. All of those wins at Oakland University.
The latest was the one that got the Golden Grizzlies into the NCAA Tournament, an 83-76 victory over Milwaukee in the Horizon League championship.
It'll be their fourth trip to the Big Dance. The only coaches to go 40 years at a one school and make the NCAA Tournament four or more times: Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Adolph Rupp, Ray Meyer, Greg Kampe. The school was Division II from 1967-1998. Then it jumped to Division I. Thanks to Kampe, of course. The Grizzlies made the NCAAs three times in seven seasons from 2005-11, but in recent years he wondered if he'd ever get to taste it once more.
"You don't go for 12 years and people start wondering about you," Kampe told CBS Sports after the win.
This season, he believed his team had a different chemistry. And on Tuesday night, an incredible thing materialized at Indiana Farmers Coliseum.
"The last thing I said to my team before we went out was, 'March makes heroes. Someone's going to put a cape on tonight, let's see who that is,'" Kampe said.
Then Trey Townsend became Batman. The fourth-year junior scored a personal-best 38 points alongside 11 rebounds and five assists. It was the game of his life at the school he grew up dreaming about in the biggest moment of his college career.
"The kid wanted to play at Oakland," Kampe said. "Kids grow up in this state wanting to play at Michigan and Michigan State, they don't want to play Oakland."
Towsend is the son of Nicole Leigh and Skip Towsend, both former Oakland basketball players; Kampe's known Trey since he was a toddler. That boy he once knew was a man unstoppable against Milwaukee. March is incredible for stories like this.
"He came to my camp from the time he could make a basket," Kampe said late Tuesday night, graciously picking up the phone and speaking over the din of the only place he could find meal close to midnight: a dive bar (The Free Spirit) on the outskirts of Indianapolis.
"I haven't eaten in three days and nothing's open," Kampe said in his typical droll delivery.
His celebration included pork dumplings and a big plate of chicken nachos with an old golfing buddy who surprised him, flying in from Dallas. On Kampe's phone were 532 unread texts, including messages from Tom Izzo, Brad Underwood, Dwayne Casey, Scott Drew and Kevin Willard. There were missed calls from Lon Kruger and Steve Fisher and many others. Mike Malone, coach of the world champion Denver Nuggets? Kampe gave him his start in coaching. Everybody in this sport who knows Greg Kampe loves Greg Kampe. Twenty-two hours earlier, as he pulled an all-nighter to prep for Milwaukee, another long-time friend, Homer Drew, reached out from Arizona at close to 2 a.m.
"He was making fun of how much weight I've lost," Kampe deadpanned Tuesday morning from the team hotel as he readied for the game vs. Milwaukee. In the background, I could hear cheerleaders and Golden Grizzlies fans hollering as they sent the team off for its morning shootaround.
There will be 68 teams with 68 stories, some of them especially powerful, in this year's men's NCAA Tournament. Among basketball people, few men will be more celebrated than Kampe. The definition of a lifer, he's among the funniest and most loyal people in the business. Four decades in, his character seems to be bringing good karma his way in the winter of his career. The Horizon League had five 20-win teams this season; Oakland beat three of them en route to the automatic bid as the top seed.
A week ago, Kampe sat down with Blake Lampman, Oakland's fifth-year point guard. Kampe delivered a message with emotion and urgency, "We gotta do this. I want you and Trey to get to the tournament."
Then Lampman stopped Kampe and said something back to the old coach that halted him.
Coach, we want to do it for you.
"In 40 years I've never had a player say something like that," Kampe said.
He deserves this moment. It's fitting, in his 40th year, that he gets it. Kampe's coached most seasons in the far backdrop of college basketball, but you don't get to 700 wins by being just another coach at just another school. He's never had a truly bad team; Oakland's never finished worse than sixth place. After Jim Boeheim retired at Syracuse, Kampe became college basketball's longest-tenured coach. He's similar to Boeheim in that he's only been the head coach of one school his entire life; he might prove to be the last to ever go 35-plus seasons only coaching one program for his career.
Yes, Greg Kampe may well be the last of his kind, which is appropriate, since he is one-of-a-kind. And in a cutthroat sport, pretty much everyone roots for him. The 28-year-old Greg would've never believed it. In 1984, he was an assistant at Toledo when the school's baseball coach walked into his office, a day after playing a game at Oakland, and told him the school was looking for a head coach.
"I look at him and said, 'I'm not moving to California,'" Kampe recalled.
Oakland, as in Oakland County, Michigan. It had the same PR issue then as Kampe's dealt with ever since.
"One of the biggest problems I have in recruiting is everyone thought I was in California — I mean everybody," Kampe said.
He drove up from Toledo to apply for the job. A punky assistant with a confidence streak, Kampe wound up being the school's second choice. Dick Bennett was coaching at Wisconsin's-Stevens Point and turned it down.
"I guess lucky for me he didn't take it," Kampe said. "Lucky for him he didn't take it, too."
Kampe was convinced he'd be the next John Wooden. He was cocky enough to tell a couple people that as well. Oakland hadn't existed for two decades as a program and it rarely finished a season above .500. The athletic department was so small, everyone had at least two jobs on meager salaries.
"Honest to God I thought I'd win the national championship and get the UCLA job the next year," Kampe said. "That's how ridiculous I was at that age."
By his third year Oakland won 20 games and he was on his way to a legacy at a place he didn't see himself at for long. In the ensuing years, he watched as other coaches got bigger jobs, some became legends, while others took the scenic route through all levels and ups and downs of what this sport can do for and to a person. Kampe avoided that, instead keeping his flag in Michigan and year after year after year carving out something his own. Were there hopes of a bigger job? Of course.
Had he ever gone somewhere else, would he have passed John Wooden on the all-time win list? Maybe not. But that's what he did in February 2023, when he logged win No. 665.
"I haven't paid much attention to wins, because why, what good does to do for ya?" he said.
But he noticed that one. Wooden. Did he really live it? Did he actually do it? Yes. And he's going to keep going. Kampe isn't going to retire after 40 round years, a clean number. His children are fully grown and he made it through a divorce in recent years. Lifer.
"I don't want to die. I don't want to quit. I don't know what else I'd do," he said.
He'd raise money for cancer, as he's done for years to the tune of millions of dollars, but he already does that anyway. Play golf, sure. He'll swing the sticks with anyone. But Kampe is as clear-eyed a coach as ever because he's found balance and a new philosophy at this stage of his life. He only holds on to a few "non-negotiables" when it comes to his team. In recent years, he's had his program raided by the portal. It hit a low when he took a vacation a few years back, only to discover he lost two players without them ever telling him.
"It took a couple of years to recover from it and I was an angry old guy about it," Kampe told me. "Now, it's embrace year-by-year and try and squeeze four years of nurturing kids into 365 days."
He doesn't get angry like that anymore. Kampe also nearly died seven years ago. He's more than making it work, he's changed so many things about how he does the job in the micro and the macro. He's "Grandpa." And Grandpa has Oakland back in the NCAA Tournament, an especially sweet story in an event that, by its nature, provides sweet stories.
"This is all about those kids," he said. "I told them I've got more rings than I'll ever need. I don't need another one to make me feel good about coaching. And it's not like I'm going anywhere."
The only place Kampe is going is to the Big Dance. Next on the list is something he's yet to do, but maybe this 40th season will be the charm: win a first round NCAA Tournament game. Oh, and one more thing now that Oakland's got another trophy to put behind glass at the team facility.
"I have three years left on my contract," said Kampe, "I'm going to ask for an extension."
In a sport enriched by colorful characters, there is no one like Greg Kampe.
