Ohio State women’s basketball will host NCAA Tournament games for a third straight year.
The Buckeyes earned a No. 4 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament and will host No. 13 seed Montana State in the first round on Friday at the Schottenstein Center. The game time has not yet been announced.
If Ohio State wins its first game, it will face either No. 5 seed Tennessee or No. 12 seed South Florida on Sunday, also at the Schottenstein Center.
Ohio State is in the Birmingham 3 region, meaning the Buckeyes will head to Birmingham, Alabama, for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight if they advance that far. Texas is the No. 1 seed in Ohio State’s region with TCU as the No. 2 seed and Notre Dame as the No. 3 seed.
The Bracket.
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The Buckeyes, who enter the NCAA Tournament with a 25-6 record, will look to do a better job capitalizing on their first-weekend home-court advantage than they did last year, when they were upset by Duke in the second round as a No. 2 seed. Ohio State made a run to the Elite Eight in 2023 when it hosted first- and second-round games as a No. 3 seed.
Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said his team is focused on taking things one game at a time starting with Friday’s game against Montana State, which will bring a 30-3 record to Columbus.
“It’s, I think, a very difficult bracket. There's a lot of great teams. So we'll take it one game at a time, but we know we're going to have to be very good to win our first one and advance anywhere beyond that,” McGuff said shortly after the team’s NCAA Tournament selection was announced.
Ohio State is coming off an up-and-down end to the season as the Buckeyes went just 5-5 in their last 10 games, including a 75-46 loss to UCLA – the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament – in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals. McGuff thinks his team is capable of making a run in the NCAA Tournament, but must play at a more consistent level than it did down the stretch of the season.
“Our good is really good. We just have been an inconsistent team,” McGuff said. “So we really try to focus on some of the fundamentals of the offense and the defense just to allow ourselves to be the team we're capable of being for closer to 40 minutes.”
Ohio State’s top two players, Jaloni Cambridge and Cotie McMahon, both left the Big Ten semifinal loss to UCLA early with injuries, but McGuff said he expects both to be available to play on Friday.
“They should be fine,” McGuff said. “They both got kind of a little bit banged up, but I think this past week not having any games was really helpful. So I feel like by the time we play on Friday, they should be good to go.”
McGuff also said he expects freshman guard Ava Watson, who has been sidelined by an injury since February, has “a good chance” to be ready to play in the NCAA Tournament. Freshman center Elsa Lemmilä’s availability is in question due to a foot injury, but McGuff says he expects to have a better idea of her status later in the week.
