For the second straight season, Ohio State’s hopes of hoisting a Big Ten Tournament title were ended by UCLA in the semifinal round.
However, unlike last season, the Buckeyes seem to be building momentum at the right time. One year after being battered by the Bruins 75-46 in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament, Ohio State hung around with the most dominant team in the conference. The Buckeyes ultimately fell to the No. 2-ranked team in the country, 72-62, but head coach Kevin McGuff feels his team is headed in the right direction as the NCAA Tournament approaches.
“We played well against Indiana. I think we played pretty well against Minnesota, and we didn’t quite play well enough today against a great UCLA team,” McGuff said when asked about the Big Ten Tournament. “I think (UCLA) has a chance to do something really special here in March and as I told the team, ‘Hey, if you want to make a run in March this is the type of team you’re going to have to beat,’ and we had the effort and intensity, we just have to play better if we want to try to win a game like that.”
According to Gray, the sort of effort and intensity that the Buckeyes played with in their loss to the Bruins wasn’t necessarily prevalent in last year’s loss to UCLA in the Big Ten Tournament.
“It’s two totally different teams,” Gray said . “Last year, our chemistry wasn’t good at all if I’m being honest. After the first half of that game last year, we kind of just laid down. This year, we knew that we had a lot of fight in us and we had a chip on our shoulder, because we knew how good we are capable of being.”
The Buckeyes have flashed plenty of potential over the last four games. They dominated Michigan State 87-68 in the final game of the regular season, before coming up with another blowout win over Indiana in their first Big Ten Tournament game.
The Buckeyes’ defense was on point in a 60-55 win over Minnesota and was fairly impressive in the loss to the Bruins. Ohio State held UCLA to 28-63 shooting (44.4 percent) and forced 12 turnovers. Perhaps most impressive was that the Buckeyes tied the Bruins, a team that ranks second nationally in rebounding margin, on the glass, as each team came up with 34 rebounds.
UCLA star center Lauren Betts was also held in check, as much as she can be. The Big Ten Player of the Year scored 14 points and grabbed nine rebounds.
Sophomore center Elsa Lemmilä was proud of her individual performance against Betts and her team’s effort on the glass.
“Part of our game plan was to be able to get rebounds against them,” Lemmilä said. “That obviously wasn’t why we lost, but I think we can be pretty proud of that, because we’re definitely an undersized team compared to UCLA.”
For all of the positives, though, the Buckeyes were kept off their rhythm offensively against the Bruins. Ohio State made just 21-57 (36.8 percent) field goals in the loss and committed 15 turnovers. Star sophomore point guard Jaloni Cambridge was at the forefront of some of those offensive issues. Making just 4-14 shots from the field, she scored 12 points, her lowest total this season against a Big Ten foe.
After the game, McGuff gave credit to UCLA for stifling Cambridge and the rest of the Buckeyes on Saturday.
“I thought (Cambridge) got enough good looks at the basket and I could live with those shots, some of them just didn’t go in like they normally do,” McGuff said, “but hey, that’s the way it goes. UCLA is a great team, give them credit. They made some big plays today, and we kind of played from behind all game, because when we had chances to make shots, we didn’t make them, and UCLA did.”
Even with the loss to UCLA, Ohio State is still likely to receive a top-four seed and earn home court advantage for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Ahead of its game against UCLA, Ohio State was on pace to receive a No. 3 seed, according to the latest projection from ESPN’s Charlie Creme.
The Buckeyes will know for sure when they are playing and who they are playing in the NCAA Tournament on Selection Sunday on March 15 at 8 p.m.
