Monday starts a week off of games for No. 9 Ohio State women’s basketball, but before any respite, the Buckeyes face the Oregon Ducks, in Eugene, Oregon.
The Buckeyes won the first of the two West Coast games when they defeated the Washington Huskies on Thursday night, in Seattle, Washington. The Huskies led for less than 40 seconds of the 40-minute game in a performance for Ohio State that showed that the travel was not going to slow down a side on a three-game winning streak.
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Now, senior guard Chance Gray returns to Eugene after she spent her first two NCAA seasons as an Oregon Duck to try and lead the Buckeyes to a sweep of the Pacific Northwest Big Ten teams.
Euro bigs face off
Thursday was a guard matchup between Sayvia Sellers and Avery Howell against Jaloni and Kennedy Cambridge that lived up to the billing. Now the battle goes inside on Sunday between Ohio State sophomore center Elsa Lemmilä and Oregon sophomore forward Ehis Etute.
It will not be a battle of height, as Lemmilä is six inches taller than Etute, but the challenge for the Buckeyes’ Finnish big is the physicality. Etute played a bench role in her first season in Oregon and got off to a slow start this season.
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However, the forward comes into Sunday leading the team to a four-game winning streak. The forward from Luxembourg takes on challengers inside the paint and goes for high percentage interior baskets. If Etute misses, the sophomore has a good chance of getting the rebound on her own.
Etute does not give up on plays and has the tenacity to go up against the 6-foot-6 Lemmilä on the boards with a Big Ten leading 85 offensive boards, seven more than Minnesota Golden Gopher Sophie Hart on the leaderboard.
Foul trouble hurt Etute through the first half of the Big Ten schedule but more composed play limited the whistles of late. In the last three games, Etute averaged 21 points and 9.7 rebounds and led the Ducks scoring in two of the three games.
Inside presence has been hit or miss for Ohio State this season, and a lot of that had to do with Lemmilä’s two offseason surgeries and that she still needed time to recover when the season began. Like Etute, Lemmilä comes into Sunday’s game on a stronger clip than usual with 12.3 points and 9.3 rebounds per game as a secondary scorer to guard Jaloni Cambridge.
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For Oregon, Etute is the focal point who then opens up a pair of guards. First is senior guard Mia Jacobs who transferred to Eugene from Fresno State and brought her 18.3 points and 10 rebounds per game into the Big Ten.
The increase in difficulty, and less reliance on Jacobs in the offense, led to a drop down to 14.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game in her final NCAA season. Even so, Jacobs is the team’s second best rebounder behind Etute and the far and away deep shooting threat for Oregon.
Then there is sophomore guard Katie Fiso who played less than 10 minutes per game as a freshman but is now the team’s offensive leader. Fiso is not a strong three-point shooter, taking only 1.2 shots from deep per game, but Fiso is a midrange and inside threat who can pass the ball as good as nearly anyone in the conference. The guard is second in the Big Ten with 6.8 assists per game, and part of the reason that Etute’s game is surging inside of late.
Ohio State’s looming question in the paint is the availability of redshirt freshman forward Kylee Kitts who missed the last five games due to a shoulder injury sustained in the final minutes against the TCU Horned Frogs on Jan. 19, 2026. Before Thursday’s game, Kitts was moved from out to questionable on the injury report, but was downgraded back to out before the game began.
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After the victory, head coach Kevin McGuff floated the idea of Kitts maybe returning on Sunday. If it does, it gives the Buckeyes an advantage, depending on how many minutes the team wants the forward to play. If not, Oregon does not have the same inside duo of Ava Heiden and Hannah Stuelke like the Iowa Hawkeyes and the four-guard Ohio State lineup will still have success without an overwhelming mismatch.
Chance Gray returns
Ohio State and Oregon played last season in Gray’s first game against her former coach and program. The Cincinnati native called Eugene, Oregon home for two seasons before leaving head coach Kelly Graves for McGuff, who coached Gray’s older sister at Xavier University.
However, this is the first, and likely only, time that Gray will be on campus again for a competitive game of basketball. Gray’s return comes at a time when the senior is playing some of the best basketball of her career and is quietly the Buckeyes’ second best scorer in Big Ten play this season.
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Last season, when Gray played as a shooting guard who spent most of her time waiting for passes outside of the arc, the then junior’s effectiveness was hit-or-miss. Gray hit double-digit scoring in nine Big Ten games last season, but never on a run of more than three games.
Currently, Gray is on a run of 11 games with 10 points or more, and 10 of those are in-conference. Gray averaged 16.1 points on three made shots from beyond the arc per game in that stretch and had four games with at least 20 points.
“I just feel like that’s my job to be as consistent as I can and be that even level for the team,” Gray told reporters. “We know Jaloni [Cambridge] is going to do what she does, but they can look to me and just know that I’ll be there regardless in the times that we need to get going, whether that’s assisting, whether that’s scoring or getting a steal on defense or just being there and in the ways I need to be.”
Defensively, the offense-first Gray is contributing at a high clip. Against the Huskies on Thursday and their group of four talented starting guards, Gray had three steals, her single game record in the 25-26 season.
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The Buckeyes landed in Eugene on Friday, which means Gray has time to check out some of the sites on campus that she missed, or show places to her teammates. That is not exactly on her mind.
“I’m just like excited to go back and play there in the gym and see some of my old coaches,” Gray said. “But other than that, I’m just looking forward to winning.”
Big Ten standings
A week ago the Buckeyes went to Iowa City, Iowa and came home with nothing more than a humbling defeat. That Iowa victory put the Hawkeyes in second place behind the UCLA Bruins with a 9-0 Big Ten record.
It looked like Iowa and UCLA were set to run away with the conference but then the Hawkeyes traveled to California. The Hawkeyes’ three game week ended with three losses to the Bruins, USC Trojans and back home on Thursday against the Golden Gophers.
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Now, all that to say that UCLA is still running away with the conference right now but Iowa’s losses puts Ohio State in third place in the Big Ten. That is important because the top four teams in the conference earn a bye into the quarterfinals of the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament.
In the Big Ten, teams do not have to hope to win the annual tournament to make the NCAA Tournament field, and the Buckeyes are practically a lock for one of the March Madness slots. Even so, the more wins Ohio State picks up, the better chance the team has to host the first two rounds of the tournament.
It has been three years since the Scarlet and Gray made it out of the Second Round with losses to the Duke Blue Devils and Tennessee Volunteers over the past two seasons, both in Columbus.
The Buckeyes’ last six opponents feature five teams with a realistic shot at taking one of those top four spots, including the Oregon Ducks on Sunday.
