John Calipari goes 'way back' with Oakland HC Greg Kampe: 'He's a great coach.'

When Kentucky matches up against Oakland in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, the two head coaches will go head-to-head as longtime friends.

John Calipari has been a college coach dating all the way back to 1982 when he secured his first job at Kansas as an associate assistant. A couple of years after that, Greg Kampe began his first season as the head coach at Oakland — he’s been there ever since.

“Greg Kampe and I are really good friends. We go way back,” Calipari said on Sunday after the NCAA Tournament bracket was announced. “He’s not a good coach, he’s a great coach. He’s been doing it there for a long time.”

Kampe has won nearly 700 games as the head man of the Golden Grizzlies. He took the job ahead of the 1984-85 season — 40 years ago. The Ohio native led Oakland through 15 years of Division II basketball before the program was officially elevated to Division I in 1999. Kampe has since led the program to three (now four) NCAA Tournament berths, including back-to-back appearances in 2010 and 2011.

Kampe is actually among the top 15 active coaches in all-time wins, even if he’s still roughly 100 wins short of Calipari, who ranks No. 2 on that list.

Oakland (23-11; 15-5 Horizon) finished the schedule strong as regular season champions before winning the Horizon League Tournament and locking up an NCAA Tournament bid as a 13-seed. Calipari was actually watching the Golden Grizzlies’ 83-76 title game victory over Milwaukee from earlier in the week. Not because he had a weird hunch that Oakland might be Kentucky’s opening-round opponent though. Calipari just wanted to watch Kampe coach.

“It’s funny, I watched their championship game because it was Greg Kampe, and I watched the second half and they won,” Calipari said. “And I was cheering. And I told him — he and I have already gone back and forth — and I go, look, I’m happy I watched half that game and I said, but I’m not gonna cheer the way I cheered that day. But he does a good job. He’s got good players.”

That being said, Kampe says he joked with Calipari in recent days that their teams would meet in the Big Dance. And sure enough, that’s exactly how it played out.

“I’d been texting with Cal and I said, you know we’ll probably end up playing. As a joke,” Kampe told Jeanna Trotman of WXYZ Detroit. “And he goes we better not. And it happened.”

Calipari later admitted that, while he was among the first to implement the dribble-drive offense, Kampe actually made it even more effective way back when during Calipari’s Memphis coaching days.

“He’s good at what he does. He could be coaching anywhere,” Calipari added. “There are all these jobs open right now, I don’t know why someone wouldn’t say let’s go get Greg Kampe. He’s good.”

Kentucky will get a first-hand look at just how good Kampe and his Oakland team are on Thursday. Tipoff between the 3-seeded Wildcats and Golden Grizzlies is set for 7:10 p.m. EST on CBS. Kentucky will enter as a heavy favorite to make the Round of 32.

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.