PITTSBURGH — Jack Gohlke has no illusions of going to the NBA. Guys who spend five years in Division II before transferring to a small D-I program with one NCAA Tournament win in its history typically don't head to the pros.
Don't mistake that practicality with a lack of belief in his abilities. Or those of his team. Gohlke and his Oakland teammates have felt all season they could hang with anybody on a given night.
Any given night turned into Thursday, when the 6-foot-3 graduate transfer and the commuter school located 30 miles from downtown Detroit showed Kentucky and the country what it takes to win in March.
Confident at the start and cool at the finish, Gohlke made 10 3-pointers and scored a career-high 32 points as the 14th-seeded Golden Grizzlies delivered the first true shock of this year's March Madness, beating the third-seeded Wildcats 80-76.
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“We've been a solid team all year,” said Gohlke, who arrived at Oakland last fall after graduating from Hillsdale College. “We've won close games all year.”
Just never on this stage. Yet it was the Horizon League champion Grizzlies (24-11) and not the Wildcats (23-10) of the mighty Southeastern Conference who looked like they were prepared for the pressure of the one-and-done, anything-can-happen NCAA Tournament. Oakland will face 11th-seeded North Carolina State in the second round on Saturday, ensuring a double-digit seed will advance to the South Region semifinals.
Gohlke's shotmaking gave Oakland some swagger early. His teammates picked it up late when Kentucky went to a box-and-one in hopes of slowing him down.
Horizon League Player of the Year Trey Townsend had 17 points for Oakland. DQ Cole added 12, including a 3 from the corner with 28 seconds left that gave the Grizzlies a four-point lead. Oakland never trailed over the final 14:32 to send the Wildcats and coach John Calipari to another early tournament exit.
“To define their season and our season with this game, it’s the sport we’re in,” Calipari said. “It’s what we do.”
Antonio Reeves led Kentucky with 27 points. Tre Mitchell added 14 and Rob Dillingham scored 10, but the Wildcats and their roster stacked with potential NBA draft picks spent most of the night trying — and failing — to chase down Gohlke.
He made 10 of 20 3-point attempts, seven in the first half, to fall one short of Jeff Fryer's NCAA Tournament record, set in 1990 for Loyola Marymount. Gohlke's only other points came after he was fouled — while attempting a 3. Just another night for a player who appropriately wears No. 3 and had taken 335 shots from the field coming in, 327 of them from beyond the arc.
“It’s definitely a special thing, watching him just (make) 3 after 3 after 3,” Townsend said. "It gives us momentum and excitement to keep playing hard.”
The Wildcats came in as 13 1/2-point favorites, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, but instead lost to a double-digit seed for the second time in three seasons. In 2022, it was 15th-seeded Saint Peter's that sent the Wildcats home. This time it was a team led by the longest-tenured coach in the country.
Greg Kampe has spent 40 years at Oakland. And until the clock hit zero, the 68-year-old thought the biggest victory of his career had come in 2000, when the Grizzlies beat Michigan in the regular season.
There's a new No. 1.
“As soon as that horn went off, I changed my mind immediately,” Kampe said with a laugh before turning a little more serious. “We led the whole game and every time they got the lead, we came right back. If we were pretenders, we would have folded. We’re not pretenders. We believe we belong here.”
Oakland certainly looked the part. The Wildcats, not so much.
Calipari said his job is to take the pressure off his young roster's shoulders and place them on his. It must have felt awfully heavy at times while Gohlke and the Grizzlies kept pace with the second-highest-scoring team in the country.
Gohlke, who has the green light to take any shot from deep, won the Horizon League's Sixth Man of the Year award after averaging 12 points off the bench. He boosted his 3-point total to an NCAA-leading 131 this season. Seven of his 10 against the Wildcats came during an electric first half that had the majority of fans at PPG Paints Arena on their feet and the Wildcats on their heels.
Gohlke stuck out his tongue after his fifth 3. When his sixth fell through the net, he turned around and mimicked Michael Jordan's shoulder shrug during the 1992 NBA finals. Gohlke then banked in his seventh as the Grizzlies built a 38-35 halftime lead that had everyone in the crowd not wearing Kentucky blue roaring, just as Kampe hoped.
The roars only grew louder in the final moments, when Gohlke ended the game with the ball in his hands after one final Kentucky miss as the Grizzlies became the 23rd 14 seed to win a first-round game since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Gohlke, whose coach laughed when it was suggested he had become an overnight celebrity, is hardly interested in being a one-game wonder.
“We're definitely not done yet,” he said.
Duquesne 71, BYU 67
OMAHA, Neb. — As his players celebrated around him after springing the first big upset of the NCAA Tournament, Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot joked that they had refused to let their retiring coach reach “the promised land” with their down-to-the-wire win over BYU.
The promised land is a better description for the second round of the NCAA tourney anyway.
Dae Dae Grant scored 19 points, including four clinching free throws in the final 10 seconds, and the No. 11 seed Dukes held on after blowing a 14-point lead to the sixth-seeded Cougars on Thursday.
Jakub Necas added 12 points and Jimmy Clark III had 11 for the Atlantic 10 tourney champs, who won four games in four days there just to qualify for their first dance in 47 years, and now have their first win on the NCAA stage since 1969. The Dukes (25-11) will play third-seeded Illinois for a spot in the Sweet 16 on Saturday.
“I'm trying to retire,” the 65-year-old Dambrot said, “but if we keep winning games, they're going to make me an old man.”
The sweat-it-out ending Thursday would age any coach in a hurry.
The Cougars (23-11) trailed 46-32 in the second half before drawing even when Fousseyni Traore, who had struggled all game, slammed down the second of back-to-back baskets to knot the affair at 60-all with 1:45 to go.
Clark was fouled at the other end and made two free throws for Duquesne, and when Traore missed a floater, he got to the line again. Clark only made the first of two foul shots this time but helped tie up a loose ball after the second, and on the next play, the slick guard broke down the defense for a layup and a 65-60 lead with 26.9 seconds left.
Dallin Hall tried to give the Cougars a chance with four free throws and a deep 3-pointer in the final 20 seconds, but Grant — one of the nation's best foul shooters — was stoic from the line to help send the Dukes into the weekend.
"Bust them brackets, baby! Bust them brackets, baby!” Clark roared as Duquesne headed back to the locker room.
Jaxson Robinson had 25 points for the Cougars, who have lost five straight in the NCAA Tournament, the last four to double-digit seeds. Traore and Spencer Johnson added 11 points apiece, and Hall also finished with 11.
“Just a devastating day for us for sure,” BYU coach Mark Pope said, “and it's devastating because we lost, devastating because we won't move on, and most devastating because we won't get in the gym together again.”
Indeed, the Cougars were bloodied and bumming for most of the game.
Hall took a shot to the face that left him with tissues shoved up his bleeding nostrils in the first half. Richie Saunders got an elbow to the midsection that left him doubled over on the floor. Johnson even lost a shoe while playing defense, and the Dukes took advantage of the opening for a dunk that helped them build a big early lead.
“We made them work for everything they got,” Dambrot said.
Robinson, voted the top backup in the Big 12 this season, tried to keep the Cougars afloat with 12 first-half points, but Necas — a Czech freshman averaging 2.3 a game — countered with eight of his own to help Duquesne take a 38-30 lead at the break.
The pressure of the NCAA Tournament seemed to boil over in the opening minutes of the second half.
The Dukes' Fousseyni Drame got tied up with the Cougars' Noah Waterman on a rebound and both went to the floor, where they started to wrestle as official Pat Driscoll leaped between them. Driscoll was shaken up and both players got technical fouls, and that wound up foreshadowing a game that would be a fight all the way to the finish.
“It was a tough game. They’re super physical,” Dambrot said. "The biggest thing is our toughness was on display, and if you're a tough team both mentally and physically, you have a chance to win.”
North Carolina State 80, Texas Tech 67
PITTSBURGH — North Carolina State is getting a little tired of being asked if it's tired.
The way the Wolfpack are playing, it's hard to blame them.
Ben Middlebrooks scored a career-high 21 points and 11th-seeded N.C. State surged past sixth-seeded Texas Tech 80-67 on Thursday night in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Wolfpack (23-14), who won five games in five days in the ACC Tournament to earn an automatic bid, didn't look hung over emotionally or physically while capturing their first March Madness game in nine years.
“We heard a lot about fatigue,” Middlebrooks said. "It seems like we’re getting stronger every game we play.”
It certainly seemed that way. N.C. State didn't miss a beat when Burns ran into foul trouble in the first half. Middlebrooks stepped in and found plenty of room to work inside against the smaller Red Raiders.
“We completely played the game through our post,” Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts said. “We really went inside out and it worked out for us.”
The 6-foot-9, 275-pound Burns finished with 16 points. Mo Diarra had 17 points and 12 rebounds for N.C. State, and DJ Horne also scored 16. The Wolfpack, who dropped four straight games at the end of the regular season to play themselves off the tournament bubble, have now won six straight.
“When you’ve got transfers, people think it’s supposed to happen right away. We lost 34 points from our guards (from last year),” Keatts said. “It took a little time for us to get clicking on both ends of the floor.”
N.C. State will face 14th-seeded Oakland on Saturday, ensuring a double-digit seed will advance to the South Region semifinals. The Grizzlies beat third-seeded Kentucky 80-76 earlier Thursday night.
Joe Toussaint led the Red Raiders (23-11) with 16 points, but Texas Tech made just 7 of 31 3-pointers and couldn't keep pace in the second half. Warren Washington, playing for just the second time since Feb. 12 due to a foot injury, had six points and eight rebounds in 18 minutes.
“The season’s been filled with a lot of things I probably like can’t control but at the end of the day, that happens,” Washington said. “I can’t complain. I’ve just got to move on.”
N.C. State broke the game open with a 13-2 surge midway through the second half, highlighted by a pretty bounce pass from Michael O'Connell that turned into a dunk by Diarra and a soft running hook shot by Burns that made it 65-51.
The Red Raiders had relied on defense to reach the tournament in coach Grant McCasland's first season. Texas Tech came in 18-0 when holding opponents under 70 points and just 5-10 when teams reach that threshold.
N.C. State hit the 70-point mark on a layup by Middlebrooks with 4:06 to go.
“I just thought they were tougher than we were,” McCasland said. “I thought Middlebrooks, Diarra, their rebounding, their physicality and the combo of DJ and DJ scoring inside and out ... I thought they (just) beat us.”
It's been a remarkable turnaround over the last 10 days for N.C. State, which entered the ACC Tournament as the 10th seed and was dealing with questions about Keatts' future. The Wolfpack responded by beating rivals Duke, Virginia and North Carolina, the last a decisive victory in the title game.
Keatts admitted he was worried about how his team would respond emotionally against an opponent it barely knows. Turns out N.C. State was just fine thanks to Middlebrooks, a transfer from Clemson who has been a key reserve but rarely the focal point.
That changed against the Red Raiders. The 6-10 Middlebrooks tied his career high of 14 points set in January against Wake Forest in the first half. He kept going in the second. And when Burns — who plays a throwback under-the-rim game — got going after halftime, Texas Tech was scrambling to keep up.
It couldn't, sending N.C. State to the second round for the first time since 2015, when the Wolfpack won two games in Pittsburgh to reach the Sweet 16. Another chance awaits this weekend against the Horizon League champion Golden Grizzlies.