As the band Queen once famously sang, “Another one bites the dust.” The dust in which Freddie Mercury sang about was probably not in regard to college basketball, but either way, it is now the end of another season of Big Ten women’s basketball.
For No. 13 Ohio State women’s basketball, it was as good a segue as the team could hope for with the Big Ten Tournament in front of the Buckeyes, starting on Thursday. Before the “win or go home” bracket hits Indianapolis, there are lessons to learn from the Scarlet and Gray’s Sunday victory against the Green and White of Michigan State.
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It featured three areas of weakness that flipped to strengths, all of which Ohio State will need for any hopes of a deep postseason run.
Rebounding
Neither Ohio State nor Michigan State are a standout rebounding team in the Big Ten. While the size of the UCLA Bruins and determination of the Maryland Terrapins sit atop the conference, the Buckeyes and Spartans get their extra possessions from forced turnovers.
Headed into the final day of the Big Ten regular season campaign, the rebounding margin tipped slightly in Sparty’s favor with Michigan State holding onto a +2 margin and Ohio State coming up behind with a negative margin, but only by a fraction.
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In the first quarter, up in East Lansing on Sunday, Ohio State took over the game, and a lot of it goes to how many boards it grabbed over Michigan State.
The Buckeyes set the tone with 18 rebounds in the first quarter, and seven came on the offensive glass while the Spartans grabbed six total. The 6-foot-6 center Elsa Lemmilä led the charge with five, but 5-foot-8 guard Ava Watson was right behind the Finnish bit with four rebounds, and a team high two on offense for the opening frame.
All five Buckeye starters grabbed a rebound in the first 10 minutes, showing a concerted group effort by Ohio State.
“Coming out of the last game, we certainly gave Michigan too many second-chance points,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters. “We emphasized that the last couple days. So it was good to see our team show up and compete at that aspect of the game.”
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Ohio State showed up with 22 second-chance points, a team high in conference play this season. Michigan State only out-rebounded the Buckeyes in one quarter, the third, and that was only a 9-7 advantage. The Scarlet and Gray grabbed 41 rebounds and held the Spartans to 26.
Lemmilä led the way with 10 rebounds, part of the sophomore center’s third double-double in a row, but four Buckeyes had at least five rebounds. Guard Kennedy Cambridge, who is the epitome of size not being everything in rebounding, had eight thanks to her explosive play on seemingly every drive.
Rebounding is especially important with the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. Should Ohio State move on from the winner of Indiana vs. Nebraska, it will be against the Minnesota Golden Gophers, followed by a potential matchup with the UCLA Bruins.
Both teams out-rebounded the Buckeyes 47-32, thanks to 6-foot-7 UCLA center Lauren Betts and 6-foot-5 Minnesota center Sophie Hart. Ohio State does not have a player to match up strength-wise, but Sunday showed that the smaller Buckeyes can pester their way into boards.
Three-Point Shooting
It is slightly unfair to say that deep shooting is a weakness for Ohio State at this point in the season, but there was a time when the Buckeyes sat near the bottom of the Big Ten in efficiency from deep. At season’s end, McGuff’s side is second in the entire Big Ten on hitting shots from beyond the arc, in conference play, at 38.9%.
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Sunday helped that figure when the Buckeyes shot 56.8% from three-point range against the Spartans. It was not only the quality of shots, but the quantity. Ohio State hit 18 in the victory, one more than the program record that the Buckeyes tied earlier in the season against Penn State.
“We were moving the ball well today, we were making the extra pass, which was leading to a lot of good opportunities,” McGuff told reporters. “I also thought our offensive execution was really good. And you got to make them, even when you get them.”
Part of that execution was how consistently the team shot from quarter to quarter. Against the Maryland Terrapins and Michigan Wolverines, the Buckeyes had a strong quarter or quarter and a half of offense, only for it to slow down enough to allow opponents back into games.
Ohio State had at least three made three-point shots in each quarter on Sunday. When it looked like the Buckeyes were on a tear with a 5-for-11 shooting quarter from deep in the second quarter, Ohio State responded with a 6-for-7 quarter in the second.
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In other words, the shots fell and fell consistently.
On the Buckeye roster, four players hit a shot from deep, but none more than the duo of point guard Jaloni Cambridge and senior guard Chance Gray. The two team leaders had seven apiece.
For Gray, that is a great day but not something she has not done before. Last season, Gray hit a program record nine three-point shots, and this season Gray has 17 games with more than one three-pointer, and eight of them had at least four or more.
Jaloni Cambridge’s seven three-point shots were a career high.
“We were able to attack the paint, and they were all sinking in,” Jaloni Cambridge told reporters. “It’s a great day when I’m making threes, because that doesn’t happen normally.”
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Before Sunday, Jaloni Cambridge only had two games this season where she hit more than two three-point shots, so even the guard was hitting another stratosphere.
Prior to the win over Michigan State, a half dozen three-point shots for Jaloni Cambridge against Iowa this season were her best, but the 33-point day for the sophomore should give Ohio State fans optimism if it turns into an improved run of form from beyond the arc.
Now, hitting seven a game is a little unrealistic of an expectation, but Jaloni Cambridge’s conference-leading 23.4 points per game only includes 1.4 three-point shots made per game. A more serious threat from Jaloni Cambridge will open up her teammates and the inside more than she already does with her blistering runs to the basket and midrange baskets.
Holding a Lead
Ohio State built a reputation for coming back in games over the past few years. A 24-point Big Ten Tournament comeback here, a 17-point second-half comeback there. This season, Ohio State began to build a new reputation, and that was being on the other side of those double-digit comebacks.
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Against the Terps and Wolverines, the Buckeyes built up double-digit first-half leads only to squander them. Maryland erased a 19-point lead over the course of a quarter and a half, while Michigan erased a 14-point deficit in less than six minutes of the second quarter.
The Buckeyes lost both of those games, and on Sunday, the Spartans found their own momentum to cut away a 30-point first-half deficit. At the end of the second and third quarters, Michigan State went on runs that trimmed the lead down to 14 points. In that time, the Spartans switched to a full-court press that surprised the Buckeyes at first before an adjustment stopped its effectiveness.
It shows that the team can adjust to withstand runs, but 30 points is not a realistic lead to expect in games like the Big Ten Tournament. However, there is something to be said for the Buckeyes and how they demoralized the Spartans by the middle of the fourth quarter.
Ohio State pushed the lead back up to 24 points until bench players scored the final five points of the game, all for the Spartans.
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On Thursday, the stakes will be raised. If the Buckeyes win, they play for another day and solidify their case to host the first two rounds of NCAA Tournament games. If they cannot adjust quickly enough and fall, especially after going up double-digits, on the first day, it could be a problem that carries with them into March Madness.
