Jack Gohlke, Duquesne’s daring, Dayton’s comeback, all that made March mad on opening day | Jones

Any dedicated observer of the NCAA tournament has, at one time or another, done the whole 12-hour marathon on the opening Thursday or Friday in one sitting. It’s part of experiencing the hoop orgy.

I’ve rarely gotten that chance over the past 35 tournaments, all covered at The Patriot-News or PennLive, one previous at The Columbus Dispatch (1985), because I’ve almost always been at one of the eight first-round venues. You can’t see as much of what’s going on in the rest of the country when you’re watching four games in person.

Oh, you’ll hear a gathering around a TV yell while you’re in the media workroom, and get up to see what’s going on. That’s how I saw the first Gonzaga team to make a run in 1999 under Dan Monson (I think I was in Greensboro) and Ali Farokhmanesh hit that ballsy 3-pointer against the Kansas press in 2010 (I know I was in Jacksonville). You get little bits and pieces of the drama while you’re scrambling to cover your own region. I only heard about Vermont’s T.J. Sorrentine (“from the parking lot!” as documented by Gus Johnson) sinking the dagger into Syracuse because I was witnessing Bucknell take down Kansas in Oklahoma City.

I wouldn’t have traded any of that for the world. You never know what you might see in person. And as great as it looks on TV, seeing one of these colossal upsets live is another level. I have had a front-row seat to Madness.

But starting this year, I’m joining all of you with the kitchen remote, or maybe in a bar in the near future. And I’ve been looking forward to it. I wanna see it all. Flipping around to the best game of the three or four at any one moment. Glancing at the others during breaks.

Yesterday I began this phase, an entire smorgasbord of hoops, noon to midnight, on the kitchen 4K. Here is my roughly chronological diary.

How do I always remember the truTV channel number?

I mean, I literally use it one week out of the year. But I am always able to somehow recall FiOS #683.

And I needed it to watch the Duquesne Dukes embark on their impossible dream. If you don’t know anything about this school or where it is, you’re not alone. The new CBS anchor desk recruit – and she’s really good at bringing energy and faux enthusiasm and yelling out, “Let’s go!” over Wally Szczerbiak – stated on one of the Sunday bracket shows that Duquesne’s first NCAA bid would be great for the city of Akron.

I’ll just describe the campus this way – it’s at the end of one of Pittsburgh’s long hills and it’s endearingly but unmistakably urban. You’d never mistake it for State College or Bloomington, put it that way. It has a lot in common with La Salle in Philadelphia, a bit rough around the edges.

Which has something to do with why #11-seed Duquesne hadn’t been to the tournament in 47 years until yesterday. That was when Norm Nixon was court boss and a freshman phenom named B.B. Flenory was about to become a local star. Plus, the Dukes had one of the coolest uniform kits in college sports. They should bring it back.

It’s a really tough job these days. That’s why only some lifetime mutt like Keith Dambrot – from Akron – would take the job. Dambrot announced after the Dukes won the Atlantic 10 tournament as a 6-seed that he’s doing the Costanza, leaving on top – “I’m out!” He’s retiring at the end of this season.

Well, it hasn’t ended yet. That’s because his gathering of lost luggage including Malian big man Fousseyni Drame (who played at La Salle last season and at St. Peter’s when they upset Kentucky and Purdue in 2022) and Jimmy Clark (who played two years for Mike Rhoades at VCU) and Dae Dae Grant (via Miami OH), made sure of it.

Duquesne’s favored #6-seed opponent were those lovable Mormons from Brigham Young. This was one of those delicious shotgun marriages the NCAA tournament produces, a total culture clash of a soot-stained Eastern city school with a Wonder Bread squad of Richie Cunninghams from the land of sky-blue waters.

The Cougars never quite knew what hit them out in Omaha. They stayed within striking distance throughout, but could never quite get a handle on the game after falling behind 9-0. The Dukes led virtually the entire way.

Drame had a huge and-1 stick back of a Clark air ball 3 at 5:25 to boost Duquesne from a 1-point lead to 55-51.

Clark, nicknamed the Pittsburgh Stealer, didn’t let a tough shooting day steal his identity. His pick-6 for 60-56 at 2:50 was another winning play. Then his backdoor down the lane yielded free throws. He missed the second one but went after the board like a rabid dog and got a held ball with 0:45 left, Duquesne having the arrow.

Finally, Clark had the ball way out top with :08 on the shot clock after BYU sprung a surprise trap and almost pried it loose. But he squared up an ill-equipped BYU paperboy and drove hard down the lane for a left-hand bank runner that dropped with 0:27 to make it 65-60 at 0:27. A stringbean Czech freshman named Jakub Necas then stepped up and drained two free throws at 0:18 and Grant two more at 0:11 to ice the 71-67 triumph. It was the first Duquesne win in the NCAAs since 1969.

And a masterful job by Dambrot, who coached LeBron James in high school at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary. BYU hit more 3-pointers this season than anyone in Division 1 but North Florida. The Dukes patrolled the arc like guard dogs and would not allow comfortable looks. BYU finished a tepid 8-of-24 from deep.

It must’ve been the shoes. James gifted the Dukes a pallet of his newest Nike sneakers before their arrival in Omaha.

Dambrot will have to wait for golf. He cracked afterward:

“They just don’t want me to retire, I guess. I’m trying to get to the promised land, and they’re making me keep coaching.”

Brian Anderson and Jim Jackson are the best team doing basketball pro or college today.

They almost could make Michigan State-Mississippi State appealing.

Much as I love the Anderson-Jackson team, I could only take so much of the dueling MSUs, especially after an early 20-8 lead from the Spartans. Tyson Walker again showed why 11th-year seniors always have an advantage in the tournament (19 points on 7-of-12 FG).

As weary as I am of Tom Izzo and “Sparty,” I find myself reflexively rooting against the SEC. I’m on the warpath these days against everything Greg Sankey touches. So, I gave Michigan State’s impending 69-51 stroll a round of golf applause and moved on.

On to Illinois turning a nailbiter into a laugher.

You always must be on idiot watch for the Illini. I saw them two years ago in Pittsburgh come within a back-ironed three of losing to Chattanooga. And here, the #3-seed Illini were 48-48 with #14-seed Morehead State, an outfit that had no business on the floor with them. Moments earlier, there was Coleman Hawkins bitching at an official for a foul call and lollygagging back in transition. A Morehead kid hit a three exactly where Hawkins should’ve been guarding to give the Eagles the lead two minutes into the second half.

Fortunately for Illinois, Terrence Shannon continued his hellbent run (26 points on 9-of-16 FG). He went to the deck twice for the same loose ball, finally grabbed it while sliding and banged it off of a Moorhead player’s knee out of bounds.

But also Marcus Domask (12-pt, 11-reb, 10-ast triple-double) and big man Dain Dainja showed up. Dainja was the difference in the finishing spurt that buried Morehead 85-69, posting up, boarding, dunking. He could ultimately be the difference in hauling this team to its first F4 since Dee Brown in 2005.

Dayton’s comeback for the ages against Nevada.

Anyone could’ve missed it in progress. The #7-seed Dayton Flyers looked dead in the Great Salt Lake against #10-seed Nevada. The Wolf Pack had maintained an arm’s-length advantage throughout most of a sleepy contest in Salt Lake City and led by 17 points with 7 minutes and change to go. I’m not even certain why I stayed with the game other than I had a vague fascination with the hair helmet of Nevada coach Steve Alford. It has not changed since he was an undergrad at Indiana four decades ago. I think it could be made of polymer.

Has this man’s appearance appreciably changed since he led Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers to the 1987 national championship? If he indulged in a weekly regimen of Just For Men, he could still be wearing the candy stripes.

Anyway, something strange afflicted Alford’s team after it mounted what seemed like an insurmountable 56-39 lead with 7:15 left. Dayton had hit exactly one field goal in the previous 7 minutes.

But then the Pack got nervous and started milking clock instead of playing the game. They didn’t try to burn the Dayton press.

Next thing you know, the Flyers are rallying behind the three bombs of Koby Brea, one of the elite snipers in the nation (.497 3P%), and beefy 6-10 DaRon Holmes, one of the best big men in the nation only mostly A-10 observers know about. And in a blink, they had erased that deficit on the way to a 63-60 UD win.

I so hate to see the program of a Bob Knight spawn gack up a 17-point lead in an epic NCAA collapse. It’ll take me some time to recover.

But you knew where we were ultimately headed here – The Jack Gohlke Experience.

Other than the Olympic Games, no sporting event makes momentary household names of the anonymous like the NCAA tournament. It has happened over and over and we still page through the NCAA album decades later, smile and nod.

The best of times occurs when a little-league David takes down a brand-name Goliath behind a fearless slinger of the rock. The aforementioned Farokhmanesh and Sorrentine. Harold Arceneaux and Weber State felling North Carolina in 1999. Casey Calvary’s tip-in that got lifted Monson’s Zags over Florida, also in ‘99. Fennis Dembo going for 41 in Wyoming’s upset of UCLA in 1987.

I could go on. But the point is, the beauty of the tournament is how it gives the anonymous plugger from a school nobody ever sees a chance on the big stage.

Jack Gohlke took his shot last night. You might say he emptied his holster.

The career Division-2 mongrel from the suburbs of Milwaukee had zero Division-1 offers out of Pewaukee High School. Even after emerging as a dead-eye shooter at D-2 Hillsdale College, nobody in D-1 showed any interest last spring when Gohlke entered the portal other than craggy Greg Kampe, the 40-year veteran coach at low-major Oakland (MI).

You may recall a fearless and acrobatic little guard Kampe had a few years back named Kay Felder. Otherwise, nothing about the Oakland Golden Grizzlies probably pings your memory. They play in the competitive but unseen Horizon League. They are hidden in the north-Detroit satellite of Rochester. You don’t go to Oakland to be noticed.

But Gohlke was a low-major phenom all season for those paying attention. I, for one, had no idea he existed despite his formidable volume 3-point shooting – 121 of 327 (.370%) entering last night. Gohlke and Kampe both clearly relished the #14-seed Grizzlies’ contest in Pittsburgh against Big Blue, perhaps the most recognized college program of all time, the Kentucky Wildcats of oily nonstop pitchman John Calipari.

It’s important here to recognize just how much basketball means to Kentucky fans. It’s their religion on a par with Indiana and nobody else. They agonize over every UK move, they bicker about Calipari, just as they did about Rick Pitino and Eddie Sutton and Joe B. Hall. In many an ancient Bluegrass eye, none can still compare to the program patriarch, Adolph Rupp, also known as “The Baron.”

I have never seen fans like them. They overrun NCAA venues by the tens of thousands, many squatting in a tournament locale without tickets, simply to be present.

So, this was what Kampe and his Grizzlies were facing as they squared up against the UK Wildcats – not just a brand but an institution.

Jack Gohlke did not give a rat’s ass. He began the game pulling from every corner of the PPG Paints Arena court, careening off screens like a 12-year-old go-cart racer, his body contorting in all directions as he fired away from distance.

He shot 20 3-pointers. He made 10. That’s one off the NCAA tournament record of 11 set by another one of those historical names, Loyola-Marymount’s Jeff Fryer, in the legendary 149-115 upset of defending champion Michigan in 1990 – a week after Hank Gathers’ death.

Gohlke does not shoot twos. He’s tried only 8 all year, making 4. He’s the ultimate hired gun.

What set him apart on Thursday was the manner in which he shot. Form did not follow function. He blasted away out of balance, almost out of control. I’ve seen nothing like it since Rick Mount was tossing up grenades while falling out of bounds, sometimes behind the backboard, for Purdue in the late ‘60s.

It was one of those games where you could feel people turning on by the millions, friends calling and texting friends with extra exclamation marks.

Gohlke had 21 by halftime. He finished with 32.

His last three put the Grizzlies up 67-62 with 4:43 left. Kentucky kept coming, mostly behind Chicago-bred senior Antonio Reeves. But here’s the thing – so many of Calipari’s teams have been top-heavy with prospective one-n-done freshmen. This squad was no exception. And even though they played for the biggest label in the sport, they just weren’t mature enough to handle the stage.

Some irony there. Because the 24-year-old Gohlke, never on such a grand platform before, possessed the necessary seasoning. He played totally unafraid.

Gohlke had help. The Robin to his Batman was junior winger Trey Townsend, who collected one big play after another down the stretch and finished with 17 points, 12 boards, 4 assists and just a single turnover in 39 minutes.

When it was all over and Oakland had toppled the great blue beast, Gohlke sat with Kampe on the postgame dais and shook his head in denial about his and his team’s underdog status:

“As a player, you can’t think that way. You’ve got to go out there and think that you have the same talent level as they have.

“I know they have draft picks and I know I’m not going to the NBA. But I also know, on any given night, I can compete with those type of guys. And our team can compete with those type of guys.

“That’s why I was so confident going into it. And that’s why I say we’re not a Cinderella.”

And that’s why, decades from now – maybe long after Sankey and his gang of corporate pigs eliminate the little guys’ chances to take on the big boys – we’ll always have the memories of Jack Gohlke and his like in NCAA lore.

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• Who among those snubbed for NCAA bracket has a gripe? Maybe Pitt, otherwise nobody.

• What would expansion of NCAA tournament do to bracket? Imagine First Four Out, Next Four Out all in.

• How PSU’s Gyasi Cline-Heard survived a decade in prison and his own regret, for a shot at redemption.