NCDS: Jeff Tungate, Assoc. Head Coach - Oakland ("The Grizzlies are Dancing")
By: Jeff Tungate, Assoc. Head Coach - Oakland
At the beginning of this season, Head Coach Greg Kampe posed a question to our team…can you finish? It became the theme for our season. In the 2007 and 2009 conference tournament championship games, we had double digit leads heading into halftime. Both times we came up short and lost because we were not able to finish the game. During the regular season we always seemed to have games where we would build up leads only to give them away down the stretch. We always seemed to have lapses in our play that proved critical in our quest for a championship. This year we wanted to reverse the trend and prove we could finish.
At the beginning of the season our players received t-shirts that said CAN YOU FINISH across the front in big bold letters. Every scouting report they received had the words CAN YOU FINISH across the top. At the end of every game, Coach Kampe would ask the team if they could finish. Our players brought one of the t-shirts to the conference tournament and hung it in our locker room. At the start of the season, it was a goal for our team to win a conference championship and reach the NCAA tournament. That goal has now become a reality. After beating IUPUI in the conference championship, Oakland University is once again going to the big dance. After winning the regular season conference championship with a 17-1 record and winning the conference tournament championship by posting three double-digit wins, this team can finish.
What impresses me most about our team is how they embraced the theme of finishing. That’s not easy to do with all the pressure placed upon our team this season. We were the unanimous preseason pick to win the conference and after finishing with an all time league record of conference wins, we were expected by many to win the tournament championship. Being picked to win is one thing, doing it is quite another. Coach Kampe knew that dealing with pressure would be something this team would have to deal with throughout the season if we were going to finish. He brought in his good friend Lloyd Carr, the former Michigan football coach, to talk to our team about dealing with pressure. He told our team you must embrace the pressure. Our team embraced that talk and did a remarkable job dealing with the pressure all season. In other words, THEY FINISHED!
It has been a real honor to write for College Chalktalk this season. It has been an enjoyable experience and I cannot think of a better way to finish the diary series than to write about our conference championship and trip to the NCAA tournament. With this being the last entry for the season, I too have finished.
Go Grizzlies!
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