The Oakland University men’s basketball team has secured a berth in the men’s Division I NCAA tournament of 2024, making it the Golden Grizzlies’ fourth appearance at the tournament. Amidst the excitement of what lies ahead, let us take a step back and appreciate the history behind the team.
Long before Oakland’s men’s basketball team was referred to as the Golden Grizzlies, the OU men’s basketball team began competing in 1967 when the team was nicknamed the Pioneers. While starting in 1967 with coach Dick Robinson, the team did not truly make a name for themselves until 1968, under the direction of coach Gene Boldon.
Boldon was Oakland University’s basketball coach from 1968 to 1976 and brought with him changes that put the team on the map. Before Boldon, basketball games were free admission for fans, coming as a shock to the soon-to-be coach.
“It was a walk-in program prior to 1968 and I said, ‘Hold up, we can’t go this way!'” Boldon said in an interview with Samantha Franz. “People paid to see us play in high school, so surely these people are going to pay to see us play at the collegiate level.”
Another change Boldon made was finding larger schools to compete against, such as Alabama State, Ball State, Northern Illinois, Eastern Michigan and many more.
“Looking at the schedule when I first started, there were some schools on there that I had never heard of, like Mackinac College,” Boldon said. “I tried to upgrade the program as much as I could by adding some bigger names to our schedule.”
After laying down the groundwork for raising the popularity of the men’s basketball team, 1974 rolled around and the team joined the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference [GLIAC]. From 1976 to 1984, the team went through two more coaches – Jim Mitchell and Lee Fredrick. In 1984, Oakland University hired Greg Kampe as the team’s head coach.
Under the direction of Kampe, Oakland won two regular season GLIAC championships during their last two seasons in the league. With the transition from the Pioneers to the Golden Grizzlies in 1997, the team also started their transition from NCAA Division II to Division I.
It was not too long after the team became a Division I program for the Golden Grizzlies to reach their first chance to compete in the NCAA Division I tournament. In 2005, Oakland was put up against Alabama A&M for their first match-up, giving the school the recognition it deserved.
“If we could win the game, five million people the next day are going to have to write the word Oakland into their bracket,” Kampe said in an interview with Jeremy Peters. “You can’t buy publicity like that.”
Oakland would compete in the Division I tournament two more times in 2010 and 2011, but has since participated in other tournaments such as the first and only Vegas 16 tournament in 2016, where Oakland made it to the finals with a record of 2-1, and the National Invitation Tournament in 2017, attaining an overall record of 1-1.
For information on OU’s current men’s basketball team, please visit their website.
