There is something so inspiring about mid-major college basketball teams scrapping on a Monday and Tuesday for that coveted NCAA Tournament bid. You see it in the urgency of competitiveness and in the tears of defeat. It is about basketball, about making good on all the hours and the sweat and the sacrifice, yes, but it is also about dreaming, about becoming more than you are, about pushing through the impossible.
A year ago in the Horizon League it was Greg Kampe and the Oakland men — Jack Gohlke (now in the NBA G League) and Trey Townsend (who upgraded his basketball trajectory by transferring to Arizona) — all but sending Kentucky packing in Pittsburgh, and John Calipari on a path to a new job at Arkansas.
Though it hasn’t always been in the Horizon League, Kampe has been at the same institution for 41 seasons; who wouldn’t cheer for that? Some of us saw it again on Monday, as the Golden Grizzlies did everything but knock off the top seed in this very tournament, a game that reminded us that this really is March, and we’d better brace ourselves for a ride.
Kampe and Oakland were a great story (let us not forget that the Golden Grizzlies took North Carolina State, which would wind up in the Final Four, to overtime two days after they upset Kentucky) but they are hardly the precedent for Horizon League success.
For that award, one just has to go down the street from Corteva Coliseum to Butler University, though the Bulldogs departed the conference right after Brad Stevens’ teams played their way to a second straight national championship game with the whole country watching back in 2011.
On the women’s side, it’s worth recalling that though they didn’t win a game in the tournament, then-IUPUI played fourth-seeded Oklahoma to a 6-point game back in 2022; that was the same season the Jaguars beat Iowa and Caitlin Clark in the regular season, holding the now-Fever star as they did to 6-for-16 shooting.
Who would want to deal with Purdue Fort Wayne’s Lauren Ross, who leads the nation in 3-point percentage?
As for Horizon League teams that reached Championship Tuesday, any one of them (Green Bay and Purdue Fort Wayne on the women’s side, Robert Morris and Youngstown State on the men’s) could give a higher seed a scare in the NCAA Tournament.
Because they have length and they defend and they have 3-point shooting, sure, but most of all because they have hope and desire and desperation on their side.
They have dreams.
As the great Little Giants coach, Danny O’Shea, once reminded us all, it only takes “one time” for an underdog.
By Chris Schumerth | @ChrisSchumerth
