After building a five-run lead through three innings, the Oakland Golden Grizzlies baseball team (13-42, 5-19 Horizon) saw its season unravel in a costly fourth inning, falling 11-5 to the Wright State Raiders in game six of the Horizon League Championship on Saturday.
Lucas Day and Sam Griffith led Oakland offensively, as both recorded multiple hits, while Griffith added two RBIs.
On the mound, Tanner Ware started the game for the Golden Grizzlies, but rotational pitcher Wyatt Ruppenthal had the best performance among Oakland’s pitchers. Ruppenthal allowed just three hits and a run through the three innings he pitched.
After a scoreless opening inning, Oakland opened the scoring in the second inning. Following a double from Day, Griffith hit an RBI single to bring Day home to give the Golden Grizzlies an early 1-0 lead.
Oakland extended its lead in the third inning as all nine batters saw the plate, combining for four hits and four runs, highlighted by a double from Carter Hain that pushed across two runs. After the rally, Oakland led 5-0.
Looking to answer, Wright State did just that at the bottom of the frame. With one runner on, Andrew Duncan sent one over the fence for a two-run home run, bringing the Raiders closer to the Oakland lead, 5-2.
Come the fourth inning, Wright State blew the game open, cycling through the entire batting rotation and combining for seven hits and eight runs to jump ahead of the Golden Grizzlies 10-5.
Three Raiders had multiple at-bats in the fourth inning, including Cy Turner, Patrick Fultz and Zac Butler. The pivotal hit of the inning came off the bat of JP Peltier, whose triple pushed across three runs.
As for Oakland, the Golden Grizzlies’ offense went quiet following the Raiders’ eight-run inning. Through the fifth inning until the eighth inning, Oakland managed just one hit, a double from Day in the fifth inning.
The same could not be said about Wright State, however. In the eighth inning, Peltier added insurance for Wright State with an RBI-double, extending the Raider lead to 11-5.
With a final chance to respond in the ninth inning, the Golden Grizzlies couldn’t find a spark of offense, making Wright State the winners of game six and ending Oakland’s 2026 baseball campaign.
It was a polarizing season for Oakland, one that saw the Golden Grizzlies upset both the Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State Spartans in the same season for the first time since 2016, but also one that saw Oakland unravel as the regular season ran its course.
After defeating Michigan State in mid-April, Oakland went just 1-19 over its final 20 regular-season games, quickly sinking to the bottom of the Horizon League standings as a result. By season’s end, the Golden Grizzlies were the only team in the conference with a losing conference record.
Still, despite the finish, Oakland turned heads at the Horizon League Championship, surviving two elimination games while coming just short of an appearance in the Horizon League Championship final.
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