After suffering its first loss of the year on Monday, Ohio State women’s basketball didn’t have much time to lick its wounds.
Just three days after falling 83-72 to 10th-ranked Iowa, the Buckeyes will play an even higher-ranked opponent Thursday night – this time away from home – as they face the sixth-ranked Indiana Hoosiers at Assembly Hall.
Knowing that, the Buckeyes didn’t spend much time dwelling on their defeat to the Hawkeyes.
“We're not worried about this game anymore,” Ohio State forward Cotie McMahon told reporters minutes after Monday night’s loss. “We got Indiana next, and that's all we're worried about. The game was over when the buzzer hit, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”
| WHO | WHERE | WHEN | TV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana (18-1, 8-1 B1G) | Assembly Hall (Bloomington, IN) | 8:30 p.m. | BTN |
Ohio State will need to play better in Bloomington than it did at home against Iowa on Monday if it’s going to beat Indiana on Thursday. Like OSU, the Hoosiers have lost only one game this season, in their case an 83-78 loss to Michigan State on Dec. 29. Since then, they’ve won six straight games including three contests against teams ranked in the AP Top 25 (Maryland, Illinois and Michigan).
The Hoosiers have been particularly strong on the defensive end of the floor, leading the Big Ten with 59.8 points allowed per game, while they trail only Iowa and Ohio State in points scored per game (81.8) among Big Ten teams. They’re led by one of the nation’s best players, 6-foot-3 forward Mackenzie Holmes, who ranks second in the Big Ten in points scored per game (21.9), fourth in rebounds per game (8.3), first in field goal percentage (67.3%) and second in blocked shots per game (1.7).
“Indiana’s excellent. They're one of the best teams in the country,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said after Monday night’s game. “One of the best defensive teams, for sure. So we're gonna have to be way better than we were tonight.”
Specifically, Ohio State needs to be better rebounding and shooting the ball from 3-point range than it was against Iowa. The Buckeyes were outrebounded 51-31 by the Hawkeyes while they made only 16% (4-of-25) of their 3-point shots, less than half of their season average of 34.1% beyond the arc.
McGuff was particularly disappointed with the Buckeyes’ rebounding effort on Monday, feeling as though his team got outworked.
“To get dominated on the boards like that, we just didn’t show the fight that we needed in a really big-time, Big Ten basketball game,” McGuff said.
After a 19-0 start to the season, though, McGuff thinks Monday’s loss could be a wakeup call to the Buckeyes that shows them how hard they need to play – and prepare to play – to beat other top teams.
“As much as I tried to get us focused on a daily basis about getting better and getting prepared for the next game, complacency does seep in,” McGuff said. “Like Nick Saban (said), rat poison. You walk around, telling everybody how good they're playing, we gotta fight that on a daily basis at practice. It's human nature and they're young kids and I get that. But we have high expectations for how we play and we weren't there tonight (against Iowa).”
“I told the kids, how we bounce back from this will show a lot about our competitive character and really, how much we care about each other.”– Kevin McGuff on responding to the season’s first loss
That message was received by McGuff’s players Monday night, and they were confident it would fuel them to a better performance against Indiana.
“It is easier to kind of buckle down after a loss because nobody wants to lose two games in a row, let alone one,” McMahon said. “We're all going to be really focused. No time for jokes or anything. We're here for one thing and it's to beat Indiana.”
Indiana has a higher ranking in the current AP poll than any team Ohio State has faced yet this season, so it’s far from a given the Buckeyes will get back in the win column even if they play better Thursday night. But McGuff believes Thursday’s game will be telling of what his team is truly made of.
“I think for the most part we've handled winning fine. Now you’ve gotta handle losing,” McGuff said. “And so we’ll show a lot about our competitive character in the coming days, how we practice and how we show up on Thursday, because it's not gonna get any easier in Bloomington.
“I told the kids, how we bounce back from this will show a lot about our competitive character and really, how much we care about each other. Because if you're not out there fighting, scratching and clawing, giving every single thing for your teammate, then I question how much you care.”
McMahon echoed McGuff’s sentiment during her postgame interview Monday.
“I think we've handled success really well, but now we have to handle a loss. So this will really determine like who we are as a team,” McMahon said.
