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With O'Rena Preoccupied, Grizzlies To Play at Adams Tonight

OU basketball team will play free exhibition game against Windsor at 7 tonight.

With the community gearing up to host a Republican presidential debate Wednesday night at the athletics center, it's understandable that preparations for the nationally televised event would be engrossing.

Anticipation of the debate has created a stir throughout the campus in recent weeks — a type of excitement not present at the O'rena since the Golden Grizzlies' men's basketball team welcomed its supporters in for a March Madness selection show party last winter.

As fans filed out of the arena following last Wednesday's preseason win against Spring Arbor, the major preparations began immediately to ready the 3,000-seat complex for the presidential hopefuls.

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This, of course, left head coach Greg Kampe and his players without access to their own facilities.

Tonight, the eve of the debate, the Grizzlies will play their final exhibition game at Adams High School in preparation for the season opener on Nov. 14. Oakland will host the University of Windsor at 7 p.m. The game is open to the public and admission is free.

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"The debate has changed our practice and game schedule," Kampe said in a statement. "But the debate is one of the most important things to ever happen here, so we are team players and we're fine with moving on. Again, thanks to Adams for helping us be able to play this game."

Depth and challenges

With consecutive March Madness appearances under their belt, the Grizzlies enter the 2011-12 season with a bevy of talent once again, despite the departure of center .

The team is led by senior point guard Reggie Hamilton, who is drawing wide recognition as one of the best small school players in the country. Hamilton averaged 17.6 points and 5.3 assists per game last season and made a big impression by scoring 25 points in the team's narrow defeat to Texas in the NCAA tournament.

Oakland also returns a pair of starters on the perimeter in sophomore Travis Bader and junior Drew Valentine.

Bader was among the elite 3-point shooters in the nation (44.3 percent) as just a freshman a year ago and should once again excite crowds this season with his shooting prowess.

Valentine is the team's primary defensive stopper and a player Kampe puts a premium value on.

"Drew Valentine is probably the best all-around player in our conference," Kampe said. "If I had to pick a guy in our conference to start a team with, I think I'd pick Valentine. I mean what can't he do on the floor?"

Other significant contributors this season will include former University of Michigan guard Laval Lucas-Perry, who transferred to Oakland for his final season, and junior Blake Cushingberry (Romeo), who missed all of last year with a knee injury.

"We're the deepest team I've ever had on the perimeter," Kampe said. "We go seven or eight deep. We've got guys that could be starting at a lot of places that may only get seven minutes in our rotation."

The Grizzlies' biggest challenge will be replacing its two interior stalwarts from the past four seasons, Benson and Will Hudson.

"We don't look the same," Kampe said. "The last few years, if you had put Michigan State jerseys on us, we could have been them with our size. We were mature and older. Now we have size, but they're young."

Oakland will count on redshirt freshman Corey Petros (Utica Eisenhower) and 7-foot center Kyle Sikora to step in and contribute, particularly in the rebounding game.

"We're going to be much different (from last season), but that doesn't mean we can't be as good or better," Kampe said.

Polls and predictions

Despite having won 50 of their last 53 conference games, the Grizzlies were picked as the runner-up in the Summit League preseason poll last month.

"You've heard me say this for years and years. I don't care about any of that (preseason) stuff," Kampe said. "We don't care about individual awards. I have never discussed those types of things with my teams."

Oral Roberts University, the team Oakland defeated in last year's conference title game, placed first in the poll.

As usual, Kampe assembled a gauntlet of a non-conference schedule to challenge his players in the weeks preceding conference play.

This year's slate of games includes several road games against major conference teams, including Alabama (Nov. 14), Arkansas (Nov. 16) and Arizona (Dec. 20).

Kampe likes to joke that he was simply working his way through the alphabet, starting with "A," when assembling the schedule.

Other highlights of the early season include a meeting with Michigan at The Palace of Auburn Hills on Dec. 10 and a rematch with Tennessee at the O'rena (Nov. 28). The Grizzlies stunned the Volunteers, who at the time were ranked seventh in the country, last season with a program-defining win that generated enormous national buzz.

A heavy slate of early road games will even out when the team is home for a seven-game stretch beginning just after Thanksgiving.

"The biggest difference is we have home games," Kampe said. "We've never had 15 home games before, and I'm not quite sure what to do with them."

Oakland has a 35-5 home record over the past three seasons, making the odds of its fans witnessing a victory very favorable.

For tonight, the athletics department had to seek special permission from the NCAA to play the game off-campus at a high school. , is a student at Adams.

The game will serve as the team's final tune-up before hitting the road for the start of its non-conference schedule. Oakland split a pair of offseason games with Windsor in August as part of a 3-game foreign trip to Canada.

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