One year later, the dream is still real for Jack Gohlke. When the day is long and the confidence is lagging, he sometimes puts in a tape and rewatches the time he took the month of March by storm. When in barely 48 hours he became one of those who’s-this-guy sudden heroes the NCAA tournament positively lives for.
Jack Gohlke. Name ring a bell? Remember his 3-pointers dropping from the sky like hail for the Oakland Golden Grizzlies? It’s only been 12 months.
First, he was the Horizon League’s problem. Put it up 26 times from behind the arc and made 12 of them to help Oakland get through the semifinals and finals of the conference tournament.
MARCH MADNESS: 2025 Selection Sunday: Date, schedule, TV times
Then, as a national audience watched with collective jaws dropped, he was Kentucky’s problem. Torched the Wildcats with 32 points, burying 10 of his 20 3-point attempts as the No. 14 seed Golden Grizzlies took out the No. 3 seed Wildcats in the first round 80-76. John Calipari’s last act as Kentucky coach was watching Gohlke coming off the bench to let it fly from the next zip code and shoot him and his team into the offseason. “I think they all believed,” Gohlke said of his teammates that night in Pittsburgh. “But I think I was the one that was most confident. I was trying to tell them, ‘Hey guys, we belong here. This is the moment we’ve all worked so hard for this season and our whole basketball careers.”’
Then, he was North Carolina State’s problem. Scored 22 points as Oakland pushed the Wolfpack to the brink before losing 79-73 in overtime. North Carolina State ended up in the Final Four. Jack Gohlke ended up with one of those moment-in-the-sun Cinderella stories that will live on in replays. Here and gone like a meteor shower.
The formula: Have the freedom to shoot from nearly anywhere, fire away without fear, and torment the big guys. In Gohlke’s one Division I season, he took 372 shots. Only eight were inside the arc, none in the NCAA tournament. That’s how a guy can change his life in one weekend.
“The funny thing about it,” he said a year later, “in kind of the prep leading up to it, Coach (Greg) Kampe that whole week was telling our team this tournament changes people’s lives. I think we were all bought into the team part of it, and we wanted to get it done, but I don’t think we really thought about it in that way, that it’s actually going to change our lives.
“Afterward, it changed my life as much as it possibly could.”
He had been a 6-3 guard coming off the bench for a team from the Horizon League, a Division II transfer who took advantage of the extra year granted by the pandemic to take his one shot at the bright lights, averaging 13 points a game. Not a lot of fame in that resume. But that was before. Once Oakland took the court in Pittsburgh, Gohlke lived the life of a hit show, if only a brief one.
“My favorite thing that happened was there were a lot of kids and young basketball players, whether they were there in Pittsburgh or wherever I went, who came up to me that I kind of saw myself in, who were just excited to get to meet me and take a picture or whatever it was,” he said. “To be able to make their day with something as simple as a picture or an autograph is something that meant a lot to me.
“I was shocked. I couldn’t really fathom it for the longest time. I was just used to being a very normal person who kind of blends in. It probably took me at least a month to really understand what happened.”
He was invited to Arizona for the Final Four, to participate in an All-Star game and, of course, a 3-point contest.
“The host of the TV broadcast interviewed me right before (the 3-point contest) and asked how I was feeling and that she had picked me to win it,” he said. “I told her my specialty is definitely not just standing still and picking the ball up off the rack and shooting it. As confident as I am in myself, I knew that wasn’t my specialty. I think I lost in the first round.”
READ MORE: 19 jaw-dropping numbers behind the 2024-2025 men’s basketball season
He headed for the summer league in Las Vegas. Then played some time professionally in Montenegro. Now he’s with the Wisconsin Herd of the NBA G League, getting a few minutes off the bench, averaging 3.2 points a game. One thing hasn’t changed; at last count, he had taken 58 shots for the Herd. Only four were not 3-pointers.
Gohlke said he’s learning a lot, and it’s not always easy. He’ll keep working on his game and also mentor kids in camps because he has a passion for it. When any doubt creeps in, that’s when taking a look back at a certain weekend in Pittsburgh can be a lift.
“Every stage I get to is kind of a reset,” he said. “It’s one of those things you rewatch it to get your confidence back up and remember how you got to where you are, and also to remind yourself to keep working harder and if you do put the time in, those results can come. The days can definitely get long sometimes when things aren’t going your way. But when you have something like that you can look back on and think about how happy you were with your teammates in that moment, it definitely helps.”
Oakland is 15-17 this season and will play Milwaukee on Thursday in the Horizon League quarterfinals. Gohlke has kept tabs on his old team, and now comes the month that will always bring an echo. Looking back, was he surprised at all about the Kentucky game? Just about everyone else was.
“That was the most prepared I ever was for a game. I was just trying to be as focused as I could for the biggest game of my life and I think the results came from all the preparation I had done that week and also all the years prior. So I wouldn’t say I was surprised by my performance. I was just happy that I had made it happen on the biggest stage and that I believed in myself and I had all my teammates having my back and believing me. The ripple effects of it absolutely surprised me, but the performance itself, I was kind of expecting that.”
He nearly did it again two days later. But not quite. March got him in the end, as it does nearly everyone. It is a month that forces a lot of college basketball players to accept the bad with the good.
“It was a two-faced type of thing. On the one hand, there was so much positive that came out of it that I had to keep my head up and be happy about everything, because there are just only so many opportunities like that. But at the same time, it took a while to get over. Those are the type of losses you don’t really ever forget because as much of a spotlight we were in in the first game, the Sweet 16 would have been even a bigger stage.”
But he’ll always have Kentucky. “I hope it means a lot to the Oakland community and especially my teammates and coaches to see our name across our jersey in those highlights. Maybe it’ll be me on the highlights, but everyone from my teammates passing me the ball and screening for me or the coaches calling the plays, all those types of things, I just hope everyone is able to appreciate it and see how great of an experience that was for us.”
Surely, there must have been something he kept from that game, to remember the night that so impacted his life at the age of 24.
“I think I can say it now…” he began.
And?
“We couldn’t get the game ball, and I really wanted the game ball. It’s known that a lot of the players want those tournament basketballs that were used in the game or have those tournament logos on them. An unnamed manager was able to get me the game ball from the game, so I have that in my possession now.”
And where might that precious booty be one year later?
“I don’t know if can tell you that.”
