Nobody who witnessed Makenzie Luehring’s most recent public endeavor on a basketball court will soon forget it.
For those who weren’t lucky enough, the Oakland guard nearly willed her team to a shocking upset at Cleveland State back on March 4th with a Horizon League Tournament record 39 points – more than the likes of Caitlin Clark, Maddy Siegrist, and Jaloni Cambridge have managed against the Vikings in recent years – on a 14-for-30 shooting effort, while adding five rebounds and four assists. Her twisting, buzzer-beating three to end the third quarter was just one of several signature moments that the freshman offered up, before the Golden Grizzlies fell on a pair of last-second free throws in overtime.
In other words, Luehring competed like she was tying her shoes.
Wait, what?
“I tell our players, you should want to win every single thing that you touch,” second-year OU coach Keisha Newell explained. “Even if we’re tying our shoes, I want to beat you in that.”
However the 5-6 Wisconsin native was tying her shoes, it clearly worked very well. The season finale at CSU was just one in a line of several big late-season games, a run that included February victories over top teams like Purdue Fort Wayne and Robert Morris and made Luehring, with her 15.6 points per game, the runaway choice for the HL’s Freshman of the Year award.
That closing stretch to the season, for both Oakland and its ascendent star, became something of an expectation-setter, as the Golden Grizzlies will now head into 2026-27 as a darkhorse title contender. That’s quite the contrast from one year ago, when Newell’s squad was picked to finish dead last by just about every league observer. Though superficially, an eighth-place finish and a 10-21 overall mark might not look like it rendered those predictions foolish, most now expect that record’s late upward trajectory to continue.
If nothing else, it seems clear that just about everyone underestimated OU’s down-to-the-shoes competitive spirit. As evidence, consider Luehring’s thoughts when given the opportunity to relive her historic night in Ohio seven months ago.
“I hate losing,” she replied. “I want to use that as fuel for this year, just using that to learn from it and get better.”
“She’s going to be better and better, and she’s going to do whatever it takes for her team to win,” Newell added. “She’s so humble, so she’s coachable, and I think she is a leader. Her teammates are willing to follow her because of her humility.”
That’s not great news for the rest of the conference.
It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider what typically transpires with players of Luehring’s skill in the aftermath of an outstanding freshman season in the Horizon League.
Arguably, her closest rivals for the Freshman of the Year award were Karina Bystry and Maddie Moody, both of Northern Kentucky, and Purdue Fort Wayne sharpshooter Rylee Bess. All three took advantage of their newfound notoriety and ejected through the transfer portal for more prestigious programs (ones also with, undoubtedly, more money to offer). In fact, of the 12 HL Freshman of the Week honors captured by players other than Luehring in 2025-26, nine went to players no longer in the league.
The three Freshman of the Year winners prior to Luehring, former Golden Grizzly Brooke Quarles-Daniels, Carter McCray, and Sophia Gregory, spent a combined two seasons in the conference after collecting their honors.
It’s the status quo in college basketball: an under-the-radar recruit ends up at a mid-major school, immediately proves that they’re a difference maker, and is then swarmed by coaches who didn’t know or didn’t care the first time around. And few have executed both ends of that transition quite as dramatically as Luehring, who was originally one of Newell’s Division II commits at Lewis University before both moved over to the Detroit suburbs in the spring of 2025.
She’s still there, ready to begin an encore season at Oakland that few who saw her play against Cleveland State would have predicted. Then again, that’s not the first time they’ve been wrong about the Golden Grizzlies.
Luehring might stand apart in some ways, but she certainly doesn’t stand alone. In fact, balance and cohesion are two of OU’s biggest strengths.
Many of the rookie’s 3.7 assists per game ended up in the hands of players like senior wing Layla Gold (9.5 points per game), underrated post player Lianna Baxter (8.7), and one-time DePaul guard Angie Smith (10.3), each of whom is back as well. All three were starters by the end of last season, and they’ll be supported by returning rotation players Sereniti Roberts-Adams and Karinna Trotter.
Veteran Purdue Fort Wayne transfer Ella Riggs is likely to plug in as the fifth starter, in the place of graduated Filippa Goula. New freshmen like guard Cece Bonner, described by Newell as “a winner,” and 6-4 Argentinian national teamer Milagros Morell could play roles of substance as well.
“I’m excited about our crew,” the head coach said, with her smile revealing a healthy dose of understatement.
She should be. Not just because she was able to retain her best players from last year’s surprising team, but because they repeatedly cite the culture of the program as their reason for sticking around.
“It’s a family culture,” Luehring said. “You want to come back, and you want to show up for your teammates, and just show up for the fans and the community. “The community and family culture at Oakland has been amazing.”
Gold put it even more succinctly: “I started a family and I’m not going to abandon them, so I came back.”
Those attitudes derive from a deliberate approach by Newell, who saw one clear shortcoming of the modern college basketball landscape and is doing her very best to fix it, one player at a time.
“We just love them, and try to create as best of an environment as possible for them to want to come back,” Newell said. “And they’re amazing people. So you get retention when you have humility and loyalty in your program.”
There’s a long view involved as well.
“We talk about just being a place where people want to come back,” she continued. “I just know so many young student-athletes that can’t go back to their alma maters, because they didn’t have a great experience. I just want one through 15 to know that they’re welcome back. And the valued alumni who I didn’t coach, I want them to come back too.”
Of course, well before Gold, Luehring, and their teammates become valued alumni considering a trip back to Rochester Hills, MI, there’s the matter of the rapidly-approaching season.
The Grizzlies, given their newfound status, both individually and collectively, aren’t going to sneak up on opponents this year. They’ll have to keep growing to keep moving ahead; otherwise, the prognosticators will be wrong yet again. To counter that idea, OU will continue to depend on its culture which, of course, includes that sunrise-to-sunset competitiveness.
“We have so much competition right now in practice, and we’re trying to lean into that,” said Newell, who did not specify if that volume included a stopwatch and shoelaces. “You want the games to be easier than practices, so I really enjoy the competitive aspect we have going on right now.”
The games will be plenty hard, though. Before beginning Horizon League play, Oakland will take its shot at four high-major programs (Wisconsin, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Arizona), as well as top mid-majors like MAC champion Miami and perennial contender Toledo. It’s a schedule designed to help the team improve throughout the year, with the idea that, once again, the Golden Grizzlies will be at their best down the stretch – this time with enough juice to beat CSU and anyone else in their way.
“We just have to have a winning mentality,” Gold said. “We know that more is expected of us now, so we have to keep shocking everybody and show that we are one of the best.”
Subscribe to our emails, and get our latest posts in your inbox, plus a weekly digest of everything we've published!
