Jack Gohlke: The shooter who says he never led a team, then turned into a March Madness legend
Jack Gohlke detonated one of the defining shooting performances of the modern NCAA Tournament when he buried 10 three-pointers for 14-seed Oakland in an 80-76 upset over three-seed Kentucky in 2024. He described the moment as a shock not because of the stage, but because he “had absolutely no idea” he could become that famous. The game, and the days around it, reveal a player who built his breakthrough on preparation, routine, and a learned skill he insists can be trained: confidence.
Jack Gohlke’s 10 threes and the Kentucky upset
The upset hinged on jack gohlke connecting from deep again and again, finishing with 10 made three-pointers as Oakland edged Kentucky 80-76 in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. In his own telling, the spotlight only hit home the day before the game, when he sat in a locker room and watched reporters from Kentucky file in—an early sign that the matchup was being watched far beyond Oakland’s usual orbit.
When asked about Kentucky’s three-point shooting, he said he gave the standard answers—defend, run shooters off the line—then added a line that surprised the questioners: Oakland “shoot[s] it better than them. ” He framed it as competitiveness, not disrespect, and tied it to a broader belief that confidence is something athletes can develop, not something they either possess or lack.
Coaching, trust, and a blueprint for aggressive shooting
Gohlke traced that confidence to two coaching stops that steadily widened his green light. Before Oakland, he spent five years at Hillsdale College, a Division II program in Michigan, where he said he had “never been the best player anywhere” he played. He credited Hillsdale head coach John Tharp with instilling a clear bargain: if Gohlke worked and put in the time, Tharp would trust him to choose the shots he took—an approach Gohlke called a blueprint to “think bigger. ”
At Oakland, he said head coach Greg Kampe pushed that mindset further, leaning into high-volume, difficult shooting as a weapon. Gohlke recalled Kampe telling him: “There’s no bad shot you can take. I want you to be super aggressive and scare the defense with how crazy the shots you’re going to take are. ” Early in the season, Gohlke said he sometimes overthought whether teammates wanted him taking certain looks. By the end, he felt their confidence in his role, describing a collective buy-in where “everybody wanted me to play this role. ”
The mental routine behind the breakout—and where he is now
Gohlke said he entered the Kentucky game as “focused and as locked in” as he had ever been, leaning on a simple internal script: trust the preparation, and believe you deserve to be confident because of the work you have already done. He also described adopting principles and routines after reading a book titled “Flow, ” aiming to stay in a controllable, repeatable rhythm. The week before the game, he tried to stay off his phone, listened to music, and did visualization.
His visualization, he said, avoided imagining makes and instead centered on positioning—where to be on the floor in each situation—because even a good release does not guarantee a shot falls. That mindset—controlling what can be controlled—was his way of making the moment manageable.
Today, jack gohlke is playing for the Texas Legends in the NBA G League. What comes next for him will be measured less by one night of fame than by whether the same preparation-driven routine can translate from a tournament legend-making burst into sustained professional production.
