Buckeyes Unsatisfied With Performance Against Howard

Ohio State (27-7) may have gotten the result it was looking for in its 75-54 win over Howard (26-8) on Saturday at the Schottenstein Center, but it’s safe to say the players weren’t completely satisfied with the team’s performance.

“I don’t know if we were really consistent,” senior guard Chance Gray said of her team’s performance. “I think we got off today, just because of some of our skill and athleticism, but I don’t think we played good basketball.”

After the first quarter, the result of the game wasn’t really in doubt. The Buckeyes led by at least 10 points from 8:13 in the second quarter until the final buzzer sounded in the fourth quarter. However, the second quarter was the only frame in which the Buckeyes seemed to play their best. They outscored the Bison 23-4 in that stretch, but for the other three quarters, only outscored them 52-50.

Gray partially attributed Ohio State’s inconsistency to the team coming off a two-week layoff, but also said the team needs to play better throughout the entirety of the game if it wants to make the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2023.

“I think two weeks off, you’re going to be a little rusty, and I think we just have to get in our rhythm,” Gray said. “We found it a little bit like here and there, but in order to beat either of the teams that we’re going to have to play on Monday, we’re going to have to be consistent for the whole game.”

The Buckeyes took a 24-point lead into halftime following the dominant second quarter, but didn’t really continue to play with the same sense of urgency in the second half.

Ohio State head coach Kevin McGuff said after the game, he wasn’t pleased with his team’s performance after building their lead.

“I thought we lost focus and intensity, and that was a little bit disappointing, quite frankly,” McGuff said after the win, “because we’re just still trying to make sure that we build habits of playing the game the right way and playing the game the way we play it. We want to be as close to (playing well for) 40 minutes as possible this time of year. I said our good was good today, we just needed to do it for longer stretches.”

Although it may have had more to do with questionable calls than his team’s performance, McGuff boiled over midway through the third quarter after a foul call on redshirt freshman forward Kylee Kitts.

Redshirt junior forward Kennedy Cambridge said she appreciated her coach’s intensity in the third quarter, even if the Buckeyes were cruising at that point of the game.

“I actually loved the technical,” Cambridge said. “I told him to get another one. I think it just fired us all up.”

However, Ohio State didn’t play much better in response to McGuff’s technical. The Buckeyes allowed the Bison to score the last four points of the third quarter and were outscored 18-13 in the fourth quarter.

On paper, Ohio State’s issues were on the offensive end. The Buckeyes went 27-60 from the field (45.0 percent) and turned the ball over 14 times, but after the game, starting guards Kennedy Cambridge and Ava Watson each expressed concern with the team’s defense. 

The Buckeyes held the Bison to just 19-56 shooting in the win and only two assists, but Watson said the team wasn’t as good as it could have been in the win.

“Defensively, we have great spurts, and then there’s also other spurts where there’s no communication, or we’re just being lazy.”