Despite being led by the Big Ten’s leading scorer in sophomore point guard Jaloni Cambridge and the conference’s leader in steals in junior guard Kennedy Cambridge, Ohio State did not win any major awards from the conference on Tuesday.
Instead, UCLA center Lauren Betts took home both the conference’s player of the year award and the Defensive Player of the Year award, while Jaloni Cambridge had to settle for a unanimous inclusion on the first-team All-Big Ten, and Kennedy Cambridge was only awarded with a placement on the Big Ten’s All-Defense team.
“Kennedy and Jaloni, I think, were very worthy of potential Defensive Player of the Year and Player of the Year awards,” McGuff said a day before his team played its first game in the Big Ten Tournament. “They went to Lauren Betts, who’s had an amazing season, and UCLA has had a great year, so I can understand why she got the votes that she got. Like I’ve told kids my entire career, when sometimes an award doesn’t go your way, the only thing you do is show up and remind people how good you are and what you can do on that court. I think they’ll both be motivated to do that.”
The Buckeyes looked like a motivated team on Wednesday in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament. Ohio State dominated Indiana 83-59 on Thursday, as the Cambridge sisters combined for 33 points.
Jaloni Cambridge, whose 23.4 points per game in the regular season were not just the most in the Big Ten this season, but the sixth-most in the country, said the Buckeyes are using the snubs as motivation. However, she doesn’t feel like her team, which started the season unranked, has anything to prove.
“I’m definitely not going to say we’re upset, but it should have gone a different way, not just for me, but for a lot of us,” Cambridge said after the win over Indiana. “I don’t think we have to prove anything. We’ve shown everything, we went from unranked to top-10 ranked, so we proved everything we needed to.”
Gray wasn’t considered a candidate to win a major award from the Big Ten like the Cambridge sisters, but she, too, feels as though the Buckeyes can play with a chip on their shoulder in the postseason.
“The decisions are already made. People feel how they feel, but we just have to use it to make some points this week,” Gray said.
With the win over the Hoosiers, Ohio State will have the opportunity to continue to show why it was worthy of more recognition from the conference. The Buckeyes will match up with No. 19 Minnesota, a team that defeated them in the regular season, in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament at 2:30 p.m. on Friday.
According to Kennedy Cambridge, who scored 14 points on 5-12 shooting in the win, all the Buckeyes want to do is continue to win.
“We feel like a lot of people were snubbed in these end of the season awards,” Kennedy Cambridge said. “I feel like everybody wants to showcase their talent. All we want is to win.”
