DETROIT -- The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) released its 2026 Baseball Coaches Preseason Poll on Tuesday and Wayne State was ranked third out of seven teams.

In first place, defending Regular Season and Tournament Champion Davenport received three of the possible seven first-place votes and 32 points.  Grand Valley State checked in at second with two first-place nods and 30 points before Wayne State rounded out the top three (one first-place vote, 29 points).  The final four spots, in order, consisted of Saginaw Valley State (one first-place nod, 22 points), Parkside (16 points), Roosevelt (nine points), and Purdue Northwest (nine points).

The Warrior baseball team enters the 2026 campaign under the leadership of 18th-year head coach Ryan Kelley (511-332-1 overall record, .606 winning percentage).  Kelley's roster of 42 student-athletes features 24 returning letterwinners, eight freshmen and six transfers.

Individually, starting on offense, seven of the nine position players that made the most starts at their respective positions are back for the 2026 campaign.  That includes senior Bennett Hitzelberger (Richmond, Mich.), redshirt junior Caleb Sanders (Eastpointe, Mich. / Detroit Edison Public School Academy [Dayton]), junior Drew Hill (Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich. / Grosse Pointe North), and senior Tony Hatzigeorgiou (Oxford, Mich.).

Hitzelberger (two-time All-GLIAC) is a career .346 hitter in 116 games played and Sanders was named Second Team All-GLIAC in 2025.  Hill (2024 Second Team All-GLIAC) was the 2024 GLIAC Freshman Player of the Year and Hatzigeorgiou (2023 GLIAC Freshman Player of the Year) has seen time in 148 contests with 131 starts.

As for the pitching staff, 17 of the 20 players that threw a pitch last season are back on the roster for this spring.  At the top of that staff is graduate student Gabe Nazelli (Farmington Hills, Mich. / Detroit Country Day), Second Team All-GLIAC a season ago after 4.08 ERA in 57.1 innings pitched.  Also back and carrying the back end of the bullpen will be senior Ethan Getting (Kalamazoo, Mich. / Portage Northern [Purdue Northwest]), 2025 Honorable Mention All-GLIAC thanks to a 2.81 ERA 32 frames, five saves and four victories. 

The Warriors will begin the 2026 campaign with a four-game set against Tiffin on Feb. 13-15.  That series will be played at the Florence Y'alls Thomas More Stadium in Florence, Ky.