Only three members of this year’s Ohio State women’s basketball team have ever been on an NCAA Tournament team, and all of their previous tournament appearances came with teams other than Ohio State.
Taylor Mikesell played in the NCAA Tournament with Maryland in 2019 and Oregon in 2021 before transferring to Ohio State last offseason. Braxtin Miller played in the 2018 NCAA Tournament as a freshman at Oklahoma State, and Tanaya Beacham was a member of Toledo’s 2017 NCAA Tournament team during their redshirt year. Other than those three transfers, no one else on Ohio State’s roster has ever been to the NCAA Tournament as a player.
That’s because Ohio State hasn’t been in the NCAA Tournament since 2018. The Buckeyes failed to make the NCAA Tournament in 2019, when they finished the year with a losing record. The 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled due to COVID-19. Ohio State served a self-imposed postseason ban in 2021 due to NCAA recruiting violations. And no one who was on the Buckeyes’ roster in 2018 is still with the team now.
Ohio State’s four-year NCAA Tournament drought will finally come to an end on Saturday at 2:30 p.m., when the Buckeyes will play Missouri State in a game that will be televised on ESPNU. And the years the Buckeyes have had to wait for another opportunity to play in the Big Dance have only made them hungrier to take advantage now that they’re finally back in the tournament.
“We felt ready (the last two years) and we wanted to prove something then and we weren't able to, and it feels like we were always in the position where we're having to prove ourselves,” Miller said Wednesday. “So I think that now being here this year, there's a major determination factor and hunger of wanting to just give it our all. Especially for a team that's so close, like we want to do it together and for each other, and say we did something really special.”
Beacham said the Buckeyes could hardly even bring themselves to watch the tournament last year because they were so disappointed they weren’t playing in it, and that’s fueled them as extra motivation going into this year’s tournament.
“Just because we didn't make a presence last year, we're gonna most definitely go for a hard run this year,” Beacham said. “We want to go for everything. We want to get as far as we can.
As a No. 6 seed, Ohio State women’s basketball enters the tournament in a somewhat similar position to the seventh-seeded men’s basketball Buckeyes who will play Loyola in the first round of the men’s tournament on Friday. The Buckeye women will be favored to win their first-round game on Saturday, but to make it to the Sweet 16, they’ll likely have to upset No. 3 seed LSU in the second round – and in the women’s tournament, that means having to beat the Tigers on their home court.
That said, Ohio State women’s basketball has already exceeded expectations this year with its performance in the regular season, in which the Buckeyes went 14-4 in conference play (and 22-5 overall) to earn a share of the Big Ten championship.
The Buckeyes were picked to finish just fifth in the Big Ten’s preseason rankings after first-team All-Big Ten forward Dorka Juhász transferred to UConn in the offseason. Ohio State lost another key player just before the season began when point guard Madison Greene suffered a season-ending knee injury. But the Buckeyes, led by the first-team All-Big Ten guard tandem of Jacy Sheldon (19.5 points per game this season) and Mikesell (18.8 points per game), overcame those losses and emerged as one of the Big Ten’s most consistent teams.
Jacy Sheldon led Ohio State to a regular-season Big Ten title by scoring 19.5 points per game. (Photo: Barbara J. Perenic/Columbus Dispatch/USA TODAY Network)
Knowing what they’ve already accomplished, Ohio State enters the tournament with plenty of belief in itself.
“A lot of people had no hope in us this season,” Beacham said. “So just to prove them wrong, it feels good. I'm all here for just making the doubters feel salty.”
Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff says he believes the Buckeyes have “gotten significantly better” than last year, when they went just 13-7 in a season shortened by both COVID-19 and by the postseason ban, especially on offense. That’s certainly been the Buckeyes’ strong suit this year, as they’ve scored the sixth-most points per game (79.2) among all Division I teams.
To make a run in the tournament, however, McGuff knows the Buckeyes must also be sound on the defensive end. The Buckeyes have won all 17 games in which they’ve held their opponents under 70 points this season, but are just 6-6 when they’ve allowed their opponents to score 70 points or more. McGuff says they also need to be better on the glass, as they ranked just 10th in the Big Ten this season with 36.3 rebounds per game.
“We've kind of hung our hats for most of the year on our transition offense and our ability to score the ball. So we'll have to definitely do that here in the NCAA Tournament,” McGuff said. “And I just think that we also need to pay particular attention to making sure our scouting’s on point to give our defense a chance to really give us an opportunity to not be taking the ball out of the net and get out in transition. And then also just really work hard just to kind of find our rebounding, because that's been a little bit hit-and-miss here down the stretch.”
While Ohio State has had other successful regular seasons in recent years – the Buckeyes won a share of the regular-season Big Ten title in 2016-17 and the outright conference title in 2017-18 – and won the Big Ten Tournament in 2018, deep NCAA Tournament runs have eluded the Buckeyes. Ohio State hasn’t made it past the Sweet 16 of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament since it made the national championship game in 1993, and the Buckeyes’ most recent March Madness appearance in 2018 ended with a second-round loss.
Considering that Ohio State has a brand-new roster from the last time it played in the tournament, though, there’s no reason for these Buckeyes to be defined by past shortcomings. And they say a loss to Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals hasn’t shaken their confidence entering the NCAA Tournament.
“It just made us want to work even harder and do even more to be able to come and make a big run in the tournament,” Miller said of the Big Ten Tournament loss. “Obviously, it was disappointing and upsetting. But I think that it just made everybody even hungrier.”
“There's a major determination factor and hunger of wanting to just give it our all. Especially for a team that's so close, like we want to do it together and for each other, and say we did something really special.”– Braxtin Miller on Ohio State’s drive entering the NCAA Tournament
As the vast majority of the Buckeyes haven’t yet played in an NCAA Tournament game, McGuff has talked to the team about how they’re entering a new phase of the season and how they need to take their preparation up a notch to be ready for the increased intensity of March Madness.
“It’s win or go home, and it's an exciting time for us, and we've talked enough about it where we had the COVID, we had the postseason ban, so we haven’t had the chance to do this in a while,” McGuff said. “So our kids are excited, and they should be, and now it's kind of time to get back to work.”
Miller is confident her teammates will be prepared for the biggest stage even though most of them have never been there before.
“In so many ways, I feel like they don't even need to be told anything because though it's their first time, they're just so ready,” Miller said. “And I have the utmost confidence in them. And I'm sure I will say something at some point but as of right now, I haven't even felt like concerned or anything like that. They're really prepared.”
Both Miller and Beacham said this year’s Buckeyes are a close-knit group who have been successful by playing together, and if they can continue to do that in the NCAA Tournament, they believe anything is possible.
“We've been successful making it this far, just us being us and us continuing to do what we gotta do,” Beacham said.
