Jaloni Cambridge Emerges As Immediate Star for Ohio State Women’s Basketball With Historically Great Debut

By Dan Hope on November 6, 2024 at 4:18 pm
Jaloni Cambridge
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Jeremiah Smith arrived at Ohio State as the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2024 class and immediately established himself as one of the biggest stars in college football. Jaloni Cambridge, the No. 2 overall recruit in the 2024 class in women’s basketball, now appears poised to do the same in her sport.

The five-star freshman immediately lived up to the hype in her Ohio State debut, scoring 31 points in Ohio State’s 104-69 win over Cleveland State. She made 12 of her 14 shots from the field, including two of three 3-point attempts, and all five of her free throw attempts. She also led the Buckeyes with six assists and five steals, tied for the team lead with six rebounds and added two blocks.

According to OptaSTATS, Cambridge is the only player in the last 25 years to score at least 30 points and have at least five rebounds, five assists, five steals and two blocks while making at least 80% of field goal attempts, 60% of 3-point attempts and 100% of free-throw attempts. No one in the NBA, WNBA or Division I men’s basketball has achieved all of those benchmarks in a game either, and Cambridge did it in her first-ever collegiate game.

Her coaches and teammates weren’t surprised by her immediate success.

“She obviously displayed how talented she is, but probably more importantly, the poise that she plays with, the maturity she has,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said after the game. “And to see her have the game that she had from a points perspective, but as importantly, make everybody around her better, play both ends of the floor, really impressive debut for her.”

Much like with Smith, who caught six passes for 92 yards and two touchdowns in his first game for Ohio State football, Cambridge needed only one game to make her case that she’s already the best player for Ohio State women’s basketball – even on a team that also has plenty of veteran talent in returning starters Cotie McMahon and Taylor Thierry as well as transfer additions Chance Gray and Ajae Petty. Also like Smith, Cambridge has been consistently praised for not just her talent but her maturity beyond her years.

“She's a great kid,” McGuff said last week. “She's very, very coachable, which is why we've already seen her make a lot of progress. She showed up with great talent and work ethic.”

Cambridge set the tone from the beginning for Ohio State in her debut, scoring eight points in the first quarter to help the Buckeyes race out to a 24-7 lead. She increased her scoring total 14 points in the first minute of the second quarter as she made back-to-back threes, then had 17 points in just 12 minutes of second-half action before coming out of the game with the rest of the starters.

Even though it was her first game at the collegiate level, Cambridge said she never felt nervous.

“I didn't really have any nerves. I was just excited to be here, just blessed to be in a big environment and be here with amazing people,” Cambridge said after the game. “I was just taking the game, just game by game, day by day.”

Cambridge’s greatest trait might be her elite speed, which makes her tough to guard on the offensive end and a player who can wreak havoc on the defensive side, especially in Ohio State’s full-court press defense. 20 of her 31 points in her debut came in transition, the most of any player in a game so far this season, according to Hunter Cruse of The Next.

While the Buckeyes already had one of the nation’s best point guards last season in Jacy Sheldon, who now plays for the WNBA’s Dallas Wings, Cambridge has the potential to make the Buckeyes even more dynamic from that spot.

“We were a fast team last year, but this team, I feel like we're just very quick, very fast,” McMahon said after the opener. “22 (Cambridge) is going to be really good for us … We have some really good defenders all around, so we could really utilize that (the press).”

Rebounding was one of Ohio State’s biggest areas of weakness last season, and Cambridge also showed her prowess in that regard in her debut despite being Ohio State’s second-shortest player at 5-foot-7. She’ll have to prove that further against Big Ten teams, most of whom have more size than Cleveland State, but her ability to make an impact on the glass was something she showed her teammates throughout the preseason as well.

“She's actually been leading our team in rebounding,” Petty, who averaged 10.6 rebounds per game last year at Kentucky and also grabbed six boards in the opener, said last week.

As a top-two overall prospect in the country, Cambridge could have chosen to play anywhere she wanted. Ohio State had the upper hand in recruiting her after her older sister Kennedy transferred to OSU last offseason, but Jaloni said she chose to be a Buckeye because of the family atmosphere that permeates throughout the entire program.

“Family is a huge thing to me. I really got here because of my family, and what I want to be as I keep playing, I have to do that with a family environment,” said Cambridge, a native of Nashville, Tennessee. “Being away from home, I'm not that far, but being away from home, I'm not with my family a lot. So just being here, I just found another family that wasn't my own and just really took that into account to just keep going, honestly.”

Cambridge has fit in seamlessly with the Buckeyes so far because of her team-first approach. While everyone on the team recognizes that Cambridge is a gifted scorer, they appreciate that she looks to get her teammates involved just as much as she looks to make plays herself.

“I’ll always be telling her like I trust anything that she's doing,” Petty said. “She's just great at demanding the floor. She's good at getting to the rim. She's quick. Like I said, she can rebound the ball. And she also knows how to get everybody in their spots.”

“She's very, very coachable, which is why we've already seen her make a lot of progress. She showed up with great talent and work ethic.”– Kevin McGuff on Jaloni Cambridge

McGuff didn’t want to set expectations too high for Cambridge going into the season, but he knows the hype train has officially left the station now. And if Cambridge continues to play like she did in her first game, the spotlight will only shine brighter upon her and Ohio State’s entire team in a sport that has seen its popularity increase in recent years, in large part due to the rise of individual stars like former Iowa guard Caitlin Clark and current USC guard JuJu Watkins.

Based on how Cambridge handled being an elite recruit in high school – where she led Montverde Academy to a national championship as a senior – and how she’s handled herself since she arrived at Ohio State, McGuff is confident Cambridge is ready to navigate all the attention that could come her way.

“One of the great things about where our sport is right now is there's an incredible amount of coverage from the media in all forms, which is awesome. And so I think she's obviously going to get a lot of attention. And the thing I love about it is she just wants to be here,” McGuff said. “She wants to play, she likes her teammates and she wants to win, and I don't think it will affect her in a way that it might affect some other people.”

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