Ohio State women’s basketball played well enough this season to earn a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but it knows it needs to play better than it has if it’s going to make a deep tournament run.
The Buckeyes are 25-6 this season, but they haven’t always looked as good as their record suggests. They started the season winning 20 of their first 21 games, but just one of those wins came against a team ranked in the AP Top 25 at the end of the season (Maryland). Ohio State has gone just 5-5 in its last 10 games entering March Madness, going 0-4 in the five games it played in that span against teams who finished the year ranked in the AP poll.
Ohio State’s defense has continued to be a turnover-forcing unit, as has been its trademark under longtime coach Kevin McGuff with its full-court press defense, ranking 11th in the country in turnovers forced per game (22.1). But the Buckeyes struggled down the stretch on that side of the ball, allowing more than 70 points in seven of their last nine games. Rebounding has continued to be the problem for Ohio State that it’s been for several seasons, as the Buckeyes have been outrebounded by an average of 2.4 per game. And they’ve struggled to put together 40-minute games, often having to overcome a slow start or fight to hold onto a late lead even in many of their wins.
Any of those issues could lead to an early NCAA Tournament exit if the Buckeyes don’t play their best basketball of the season starting this weekend at the Schottenstein Center, where Ohio State hosts No. 13 seed Montana State in the first round on Friday (5:30 p.m., ESPN2). And that’s not something Ohio State wants to endure again after suffering a home loss to Duke in the second round of last year’s tournament.
Montana State
Bobcats
“That feeling, even though I wasn't out there, has stuck with me this entire year, and the goal is to not feel that feeling again,” said Ohio State guard Kennedy Cambridge, who redshirted last year in her first season with the Buckeyes. “It’s March, you’re not going to take anything for granted and anything can happen.”
McGuff always anticipated that his team would have some ups and downs this season. As the Buckeyes replaced three starters from last season – Jacy Sheldon, Celeste Taylor and Rebeka Mikulasikova – McGuff said before the year began that he thought his team had “a lot of talent,” but that it would take some time to reach its full potential. Ohio State purposely scheduled a lighter slate of non-conference games so that it would have time to work through the issues that emerged.
The question entering the NCAA Tournament is whether Ohio State will finally reach its full potential when it matters most. Because the Buckeyes haven’t done so yet in the eyes of many of their players.
“Honestly, I don't think there was a game where we've played our best basketball,” said Cotie McMahon, Ohio State’s leading scorer. “So that could be a bad thing, but I look at it as kind of a good thing. We have this last opportunity to kind of prove to people that we are the Ohio State team that has been on the radar for the past couple of years.”
“I definitely don't think we've reached our best basketball yet,” added junior guard Chance Gray. “We've had glimpses of it, but our thing is just consistency. We have all the talent in the world, but just being consistent in what we do every day.”
McGuff believes there have been plenty of times this season where his team has played the level of basketball it will need to play to make an NCAA Tournament run. But he echoed Gray’s assessment that the Buckeyes haven’t done it consistently enough.
“I think at our best this year, it's been really good, but we just haven't found a rhythm where we've consistently been close enough to 40 minutes of that to feel like we've played our best,” McGuff said Thursday. “So I think that's the key is we're just trying to be the best version of ourselves tomorrow against Montana State.”
The good news for the Buckeyes is they appear to be almost fully healthy entering the NCAA Tournament. McMahon and Jaloni Cambridge, Ohio State’s top two scorers, both practiced Thursday and said they were ready to play after leaving Ohio State’s Big Ten Tournament loss to UCLA with injuries. McGuff said freshman guard Ava Watson, the Buckeyes’ top bench scorer, is also good to go after being sidelined by an injury for Ohio State’s last seven games. The one Buckeye that’s played regularly this season whose status McGuff said is in question for Friday’s game is freshman center Elsa Lemmilä, who’s averaged 4.2 points, five rebounds and a team-high 1.9 blocks per game in 15.5 minutes per game, but she was seen practicing during the portion of practice that was open to media on Thursday.
Ohio State womens basketball stars Cotie McMahon and Jaloni Cambridge are both practicing today and said they are good to go after leaving OSUs last Big Ten Tournament game with injuries.
— Dan Hope (@Dan_Hope) March 20, 2025
Ohio State hosts Montana State in the first round at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow (ESPN2). pic.twitter.com/laEtCgNsyu
Ohio State has four players averaging double digits this season in McMahon (16.6 points per game), Jaloni Cambridge (15.4), Gray (12.3) and Taylor Thierry (10.1), while leading rebounder Ajae Petty sits just below that mark (9.4 points, 7.3 rebounds per game). McGuff named Cambridge, McMahon and Thierry as specific players who he thinks need to be at their best in the Big Dance, but he believes more bench production will also be key for Ohio State to make an NCAA Tournament run.
“One of the biggest things is play off the bench in terms of our depth to kind of keep our team fresh and be able to sub and get our bench in there and have six or seven or eight or nine people play well, I think that will be a big part of it,” McGuff said when asked it would take for Ohio State to make a tournament run. “And I think Jaloni, Cotie, probably Taylor Thierry really having a great tournament would go a long way in terms of leading the team.”
Most of all, though, McMahon believes the Buckeyes simply need to play with a different sense of urgency in the tournament.
“I feel like hopefully going into this tournament, we find a different notch and everybody’s on the same page and everybody realizes that this could really be our last game for the season,” McMahon said.
“We have this last opportunity to kind of prove to people that we are the Ohio State team that has been on the radar for the past couple of years.”– Cotie McMahon
Gray said the Buckeyes need to “do the little things” well, while Kennedy Cambridge said “it's just a matter of discipline, heart, and grit.”
“Everybody's got to be on the same page, everybody's got to believe in each other, and we just got to do it for each other,” Kennedy Cambridge said.
The challenge of making an NCAA Tournament run starts Friday against Montana State, who enters the tournament with a 30-3 record this season. While the Buckeyes are 15.5-point favorites over their visitor from the Big Sky, Ohio State knows the Bobcats’ record makes them an opponent they can’t look past.
“As I have told the team all week, Montana State is used to winning. They've won 30 games for a reason. They're well-coached. They play extremely hard, and they're going to show up here and compete to win. So we better have the same mindset if we want to be successful,” McGuff said.
