INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Completing a quick two-game road swing, the Oakland Golden Grizzlies will make the trip to the IUPUI Gymnasium, affectionately referred to as The Jungle, to battle the Jaguars in an #HLWBB showdown on Sunday, January 22 at 2 p.m.

Winners of four of their last five and three-straight, Oakland will enter play at 10-8 and 5-4 in conference action, good for a three-way tie for fifth in the Horizon League standings.

IUPUI has the same overall record but is 6-3 within the conference, giving the Jaguars sole possession of fourth place.

Correlated with the Golden Grizzlies' success over the last five contests has been freshman point guard Brooke Quarles-Daniels taking her play to another level, as she has scored at least 13 points in every game over this span and tallied consecutive double-doubles against the Northern Kentucky Norse on January 13 and Wright State Raiders two days later.

For the year, Quarles-Daniels' 11.1 points-per-contest are second-best on the team, just behind junior forward Alexis Johnson's 11.2.

Senior standout Breanne Beatty is the third Oakland player averaging double figures at 10.6 points-per-game and the Worthington, Ohio native is line for a personal milestone as Sunday will represent her 100^th career start in her 102^nd game as a Golden Grizzly.

Playing 15 minutes, her second-highest total of the campaign, sophomore and Flint Carman-Ainsworth product Aaliyah McQueen had a season-high 13 points in Oakland's most recent action, a road victory over the Detroit Mercy Titans on Wednesday, January 18.

IUPUI RUNDOWN
First-year head coach Kate Bruce and the Jaguars were picked sixth in the Preseason Horizon League Coaches Poll, one spot ahead of the Golden Grizzlies.

On a current two-game win streak, which includes an impressive road triumph over the Youngstown State Penguins on January 16, IUPUI's leading scorer is senior forward Jazmyn Turner at 15 points-per-game, the fourth-best mark in the conference.

Fellow senior Rachel Kent and graduate student Destiny Perkins also score in double-digits, averaging 11.3 and 13.8, respectively.

Along with Kent, Natalie Andersen and Ali Berg, both of whom are also seniors, are the three Jaguars to have started every game this season. This means IUPUI's starting five features four seniors and a graduate student, giving Bruce and her coaching staff plenty of experience to work with.

As a team, the Jaguars are third in the Horizon League at 69.2 points-per-game, but are allowing 70.8, the third-most in the conference.

TELEVISION AND LIVE STATS LINKS
Sunday's action will air live on ESPN+ (subscription required) and can be accessed here.

Additionally, the Live Stats are available at this link.

ALL-TIME SERIES AND LAST MEETING
Spanning nearly 23 years to January 27, 2000, Oakland and IUPUI have squared off 42 times with the Jaguars holding a narrow 22-20 edge.

IUPUI has been victorious in the last 12 meetings, though, with the most recent being an 86-63 win in a Horizon League Tournament Semifinal at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum on March 7, 2022.

Senior Kahlaijah Dean scored a team-high 24 points for the Golden Grizzlies that day.

SEASON-LONG STORYLINES

NEW FACES FOR GOLDEN GRIZZLIES
Faced with the graduations of Kahlaijah Dean, Kayla Luchenbach and Brianna Breedy, who combined to average 28.7 points and 9.9 rebounds last season, the Golden Grizzlies brought in a trio of diversely talented transfers in Raquel Ferrer-Bernad, Alexis Johnson and Linda van Schaik.

A Southfield A&T Warriors graduate, Johnson is a junior forward who played three seasons in Conference USA (C-USA) for the Marshall Thundering Herd, while Ferrer-Bernad is a graduate student point guard who came from a different C-USA program, the Florida International Panthers.

van Schaik, another junior, joined Oakland by way of the Sun Belt Conference's Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks and projects to provide the team with another 3-point shooting threat.

On top of the program's work in the transfer portal, the Golden Grizzlies' 2022 recruiting class features a couple of high-upside players in guard Brooke Quarles-Daniels, a Miss Michigan Basketball candidate a year ago from L'Anse Creuse North, and Lianna Baxter, a 6-foot-1 forward who starred at Oconto and is one of the top-100 scorers in Wisconsin high school history.

BREANNE BEATTY HEADLINES GROUP OF RETURNING PLAYERS
Appearing in all 83 of the program's games over the last three seasons, and starting all but two of them, senior guard/forward Breanne Beatty was named to the Preseason All-Horizon League Second Team on October 18.

The pride of Worthington, Ohio, Beatty is Oakland's leading returning scorer at 9.7 points-per-game in 2021-22.

In addition to Beatty, guards Kennedie Montue and Aaliyah McQueen and forward Miriam Ibezim, all of whom of sophomores, are back with the program and are in line to contribute significantly right from the season's opening tip.

JEFF TUNGATE ENTERS 10^TH SEASON
Named the eighth head coach in program history on July 16, 2013, the 2022-23 campaign is the 10^th with Jeff Tungate at the helm.

Third on the school's all-time wins list with 126, Tungate and four-year veteran assistant Crystal Davis made some changes to the coaching staff ahead of this season, bringing in Golden Grizzly Hall of Famer and former Mercyhurst Lakers head coach Deanna Richard and Tim Webb, who has extensive coaching experience at both the high school and collegiate levels in Michigan, as assistant coaches.