At Oakland University, students and alumni are in the NCAA Spotlight
If you weren’t familiar with Oakland University before Thursday night, you weren’t alone. Not far from campus, even locals at a Detroit bar, watching the team shock No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament, asked if “that was Oakland, California” or the Michigan suburb of Rochester . (It’s the latter.)
On Friday, after Oakland’s 80-76 victory as a No. 14 seed, students and graduates enjoyed the university’s moment in the March Madness sun. Among them is John Hendley, class of 2005, who watched the game from Florida with his wife, Melissa, also a graduate.
“If people didn’t know who the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies were last night, they sure do now,” Mr. Hendley said.
For all but perhaps the university’s closest followers, a brief introduction may be in order: the university was founded in 1957 through a donation to establish a satellite site for Michigan State University. Initially the campus was known as Michigan State University-Oakland, but in 1970 the name became Oakland an independent university.
In 1997, Oakland University moved its athletics program from NCAA Division II to Division I. A year later, things changed his mascot from the Pioneers to Golden Grizzliesaccording to the university’s website.
Oakland University’s campus feels more like a sprawling corporate park, and that makes sense. There are many nearby, such as the international headquarters of Stellantis (formerly known as Chrysler) and other automotive suppliers.
The university is surrounded by shopping centers with fast food chains and a golf course. Of the approximately 16,000 currently enrolled students, only 2,500 live on campus. And that’s by design. There are few if any public transportation options in the area, reflecting the mentality of a Motor City built for cars first and pedestrians second.
Even Golden Grizzlies coach Greg Kampe commutes from his home in Detroit.
The university is a smaller option compared to the state’s two major public institutions: the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, both of which are about an hour’s drive from Oakland. But for Oakland supporters, the campus felt a little bigger on Friday.
University President Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, who boasted Friday about correctly filling out her NCAA bracket during the Oakland-Kentucky game, said she was “over the moon.”
“It’s really exciting for us,” she said, adding that the national attention was great “for athletics and for our university and for universities like ours.”
James Wissbrun, a 21-year-old computer scientist in Oakland who grew up nearby and has been going to Golden Grizzlies games since childhood, traveled to the Pittsburgh game on a charter bus the university rented for students. He returned at 4 a.m. Friday and got only a few hours of sleep before going to work at his 7 a.m. job with the City of Rochester Hills grounds crew.
“It was worth it,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for a long time, and to actually be a student here and see how far we’ve come is just incredible.”
Mr. Wissbrun said he planned to take the bus provided by the university to watch the team play No. 11 North Carolina State on Saturday, again in Pittsburgh.
Giovanni Moceri, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering major, will also be on the bus. He has hosted watch parties for Golden Grizzlies games in an effort to create a sense of community on campus. Sometimes it can be a challenge.
“Many students here don’t even know we play sports here,” Mr Moceri said.
That wasn’t the case the night before at RJ’s Pub in Rochester Hills, one of the local bars, where the atmosphere during the game was “rocking,” said Russell Luxton Jr., who operates the bar and is an Oakland graduate.
Lights and sirens went off every time Jack Gohlke, one of the team’s stars, hit a three-pointer, Mr. Luxton said, adding that for every three-pointer Gohlke made, “the crowd got louder.”
Who knows what will happen in Saturday’s game? But until then, Golden Grizzlies fandom is reaching a fever pitch.
“We are thriving,” Mr. Kampe, the coach, said after the victory, adding that “everything is in place to get this program off the ground, and maybe this is the impetus for it.”