ROCHESTER, Mich. – Winning 31 games and advancing to the championship series of the Horizon League Tournament for the first time since joining the conference eight years prior, the 2022 Oakland Golden Grizzlies delivered what most would consider the program's best season since transitioning to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level in 1998.

As the calendar nears the flip to 2023 and the current academic year progresses, the Golden Grizzlies are looking to build on last season's success by participating in a pair of fall exhibition contests.

The first took place on September 25, a 19-4 home victory over the Lansing Community College Stars, and the second will come on Sunday, October 16 on the road against the Mid-American Conference's (MAC) Toledo Rockets at 1 p.m.

Plating all 19 of their runs in the first six innings, Oakland's September 25 win came over a Lansing CC team that won 44 games last year and finished in fifth place in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division II World Series.

With eight student-athletes from last year's roster departing via graduation or having exhausted their eligibility – including First Team All-League second baseman Brad Goulet and Second Team right fielder Brenton Phillips, as well as center fielder Seth Tucker (who is now the program's Director of Player Development) – these exhibition tilts are tremendously valuable to third-year head coach Jordon Banfield and his staff as they look to acclimate the program's 14-member recruiting class to the collegiate level and help the returnees prepare to compete for larger roles.

"We've been doing a good job," Banfield said of his team's work throughout the fall.

"Early on, it took us a little while to get adjusted – we have 14 new players, 15 new players – and we noticed that. I think we showed when we got our returners out there together in a game – it was 19-1 after six innings and we basically took all the starters out – and that's a team that went to the Junior College World Series last year, so that makes you feel pretty good.

"The guys have been doing a good job working and all that, we just need to continue to have guys step up and replace what's missing from last year."

While Banfield is tasked with replacing four everyday bats from the 2022 lineup, the Golden Grizzlies are in a much more preferred position when it comes to their pitching.

Aside from right-handers Quinton Kujawa and Jacob Wosinski and southpaw Chas Sagedahl, Oakland returns every other pitcher from last season, giving Banfield and first-year pitching coach Mike Ruppenthal plenty of options.

"I actually think the mound is where we didn't lose as much," Banfield shared. "Obviously, we lost Kujawa and Wosinski, but if you add up their innings, it was maybe 70 or 80 innings, and you get (redshirt senior Bryce) Konitzer, who's your Friday starter back from injury, and he'll probably eat up basically all of those if he's the way we expect him to be at full health, which he's on track to be.

"New guys, not necessarily young guys but new guys, Sean Fekete will throw significant innings for us. Noah Stants has given himself a chance to throw significant innings for us, has as good of stuff as anybody we have. Jake Matthaidess has had a nice fall, really gotten better like every time out.

"You look at some young guys, I think, of the freshmen, Jaxson Easterling and Dylan Haslett have probably been the most consistently in the zone and the most comfortable being out there. Hunter Pidek is going to take the next step, threw 30-some (innings) as a freshman, there's just a lot of guys, you even look at some guys who have been here and haven't played big roles, like Cooper Donlin and Aris Zimakas have both been better this fall.

"Pitching is the area I feel good about going into the season, I feel pretty good that we're going to take a step forward on the mound."

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Fekete is a redshirt senior right-hander who joins the Golden Grizzlies by way of Ohlone College in Fremont, California. Similarly, Stants is another senior righty with a junior college background, as he is a Commerce Township native that played the last two seasons for the Jackson College Jets.

On top of the newcomers highlighted by Banfield, Oakland's rotation is expected to include senior lefty Travis Densmore, who tied for the team lead with five wins a year ago and blossomed into one of the conference's better starters over the second half of the season, as well as a hard-throwing junior closer in former North Farmington Raider right-hander Brandon Decker.

During their 2022 season, the Golden Grizzlies played four MAC programs but Sunday's foe, Toledo, was not one of them.

Entering his fourth season, Rockets head coach Rob Reinstetle, 46, helped lead the program to a 33-25 record last season and a third-place finish in the MAC standings.

"They had the best year they've had in a long time," Banfield said of what to expect with Toledo. "They had a frontline starter last year that was their Friday guy (righty Kyle Jones) who won a bunch of games that's not there anymore, but I noticed them in recruiting, they're in the mix on a lot of guys and doing a bunch of junior college stuff and seems like they're continuing to make strides.

"Certainly expect them to be a good test for us and mostly just good for our guys to get out and see what it's like. We have 15 guys that have never been at a Division I game, it will be good for them to get out and see what it's like to play against another team."

While Sunday will not count toward this total due to its status as a scrimmage, Oakland has played the Rockets 13 times in the history of the program dating to March 21, 2001. The most recent meeting between the two came on April 16, 2019.