Normally, Ohio State women’s basketball is the side making up double-digit deficits to surprise opponents. On Sunday, it was the other way around as a 19-point lead dwindled away over a quarter and a half to give the Buckeyes their third Big Ten loss of the season. However, there was nothing surprising about how the Buckeyes lost.
Rebounding Vanished
Entering Sunday, the Terrapins sat second in the Big Ten in rebounds per game, and in the first quarter, it did not look like it. Ohio State forced a lot of missed Maryland shots, and the home side picked up all 12 of them. It is not a coincidence that those rebounds and efficient shooting allowed the Buckeyes to go ahead 13 points at the end of the first quarter, which extended to 19 points halfway through the second quarter.
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That is when things went south for the Buckeyes. For the last 30 game minutes, Maryland out-rebounded Ohio State 41-22, and 20 of those 41 Terp rebounds came on the offensive boards.
“They [Maryland] really crash aggressively with everybody, so it’s a team effort,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters. “And I just think collectively, we didn’t get it done, and their effort was really good, and ours wasn’t good enough.”
It is not that the Buckeyes cannot rebound with Maryland. Last month, on Jan. 11, 2026, Ohio State beat the same Terps with an even 39-39 rebounding margin, and that was in College Park, Maryland. So, what changed? Did the second strongest team on the boards in the Big Ten surprise the Buckeyes?
“It’s very frustrating. And something we focused on all week, it was an emphasis, and we know that the offensive rebound, we know that that’s a liability for us because of how small we play sometimes,” guard Chance Gray told reporters. “So literally, just couldn’t come up with the ball to save our lives.”
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So, it was in the game plan to expect the rebounds, but it just did not happen. Granted, part of that issue was forward Kylee Kitts, who came off the bench due to a continued recovery from a shoulder injury sustained on Jan. 19, 2026, but Kitts only had four fewer rebounds on Sunday than last month in Maryland.
The Terrapins were ready to exploit the Buckeyes’ weakness inside to grab offensive boards. For most of the game, center Elsa Lemmilä was alone inside the paint with two or three Maryland players pressuring the 6-foot-6 big. They held the Finnish big to only four rebounds.
In the last three quarters, Ohio State only looked up to the rebounding challenge in the final minute when the Buckeyes needed a late comeback. Those 60 seconds at the end of the game featured six Ohio State rebounds, and half of those came on the offensive boards. In that minute, the Buckeyes crashed the paint with intensity, which might be more frustrating for the team. That same intensity was not there until it absolutely needed to be, when Ohio State’s backs were against the wall, and they were down five points.
Inside/Outside Game
Ohio State’s recent victories included a balance of strong play inside the paint and shooting from beyond the arc. On Sunday, the Buckeyes shot well in the first half from three-point range. Of the team’s 46 first-half points, 27 came from beyond the arc, with five from Gray and two apiece from guards Ava Watson and Jaloni Cambridge. Ohio State shot 64.3% from deep and defensively held Maryland to only three, and one from sharpshooting guard Yarden Garzon.
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In the second half, the three-point prowess slowed heavily for the Buckeyes, and there was no inside game to fall back to. After all, Maryland was prepared to rebound defensively with two-to-three defenders waiting for a missed shot, and the Buckeyes gave them plenty with 35.7% shooting from the floor.
What was missing in the first half was trying to get Lemmilä into the game under the basket. Maryland did well at pressuring the Buckeye big when she had the ball at the top of the key, a place where Lemmilä can usually wait for guards to run plays and find openings. With the strong three-point shooting, Ohio State all but abandoned it, and Lemmilä went into halftime with two total shots, one in each quarter of the first half.
From the 9:30 mark of the second quarter to the 6:48 mark of the third quarter, Lemmilä had no shots for Ohio State.
Before Sunday, Lemmilä averaged 17.5 points and 9.3 rebounds in the best scoring stretch of Big Ten basketball in the sophomore’s young NCAA career. At the start of the fourth quarter, Lemmilä had only three shots from the floor. Then that changed. Ohio State forced passes inside to let Lemmilä shoot, and the center missed both attempts, which McGuff responded to with a trip to the bench.
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When the Buckeyes’ scoring went one-dimensional, head coach Brenda Frese and the Terrapins responded with a change in defensive scheme, which slowed down the makes from deep. While effective this calendar year, Lemmilä‘s confidence appears in games where the partnership between her and Jaloni Cambridge is strong from the jump.
On Wednesday, Lemmilä and the Buckeyes have a more traditional big on big matchup between Lemmilä and Minnesota Golden Gophers’ center Sophie Hart, instead of the three-on-one interior presence of Maryland. How can Ohio State and its interior game bounce back?
The Gauntlet Continues
For 20 minutes, it looked like the Buckeyes were the second-best team in the Big Ten, behind the still undefeated in conference play UCLA Bruins. The last 20 minutes reminded a lot of people that this Ohio State team is still young and will go through its trials.
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Those trials continue on Wednesday against the now-ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers. Even with Maryland sitting behind the Buckeyes now, until a potential Big Ten Tournament matchup, the last four opponents do not get much easier.
That means the loss for Ohio State does not have a lot of time to linger for the Buckeyes, who, through McGuff, try not to look too far into the future.
“I don’t want to focus on anything other than the game today, which is now over,” McGuff said when asked about getting a top-16 spot in the NCAA Tournament committee’s first official rankings, released on Saturday. “Just putting them in position to learn something tomorrow from that, and then starting on our preparation for Minnesota and everything else is going to be what’s going to be. I don’t have any control over that. I do have control over how we practice tomorrow and how we prepare for Wednesday’s game, and so that’s where my focus will be.”
The Buckeyes have not lost two games in a row this season, although the first loss against UConn had a mid-major opponent waiting on the other side. Victories have a way of covering up flaws, and a victory like Sunday’s shows that Ohio State has not hit its peak. It could be the final loss of the regular season, or the first of many with games. against not only the Golden Gophers but the USC Trojans, Michigan Wolverines, and Michigan State Spartans in the last two weeks.
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If Ohio State does not learn from the lessons from Sunday’s loss, things could get worse before they get better with the teams ahead.
Bonus Lesson: A Thought on Free Throws
Sunday’s ending was as close as it can get, with only one point separating the two sides. In close games, free throws garner attention, and Ohio State went 1-for-4 in the final 29 seconds of the game. It is easy to place blame on the people who missed the shots that would have turned the tide in the Buckeyes’ favor, but there was 39:31 of game time before those free throws.
It is the equivalent of a missed field goal at the end of a game with multiple late interceptions in football. The Buckeyes made plenty of mistakes that shine brighter than missed free throws. Rebounding, 18 turnovers, and an offense that lacked diversity or spontaneity are areas of focus for Ohio State following the Sunday defeat. The missed shots from the charity stripe were not the reason the Buckeyes lost. There is much more to study than that.
