If it feels like No. 11 Ohio State women’s basketball consistently starts slow in games, it is because that is exactly what is happening. The 2025-26 Buckeyes welcomed the Wisconsin Badgers to Columbus on Thursday night, and the game went as expected when compared to the rest of the season. Ohio State beat the Badgers 81-58, a comfortable victory that brought up the average winning margin for the Buckeyes in their eight conference wins. The Scarlet and Gray defeated conference foes by an average of 14.1 points per game, but in no way has Ohio State made it look easy.
The Badgers pulled off the early lead thanks to three-point shooting, a completely predictable way to go ahead considering that Wisconsin entered the evening first in the Big Ten with 25.5 three-point shots attempted per game. On top of that, four games this season ended with Wisconsin shooting more efficiently from three-point range than from inside the arc. Thursday night was No. 5.
Advertisement
Wisconsin hit its first four attempted shots from beyond the arc and went 5-for-7 from three-point range in the first quarter. It was not that Ohio State could not score. The Buckeyes went 8-for-16 compared to a 9-for-16 start from the Badgers, but three points is higher than two. What dug the Ohio State hole was a defense that did not look prepared for the deep shooting onslaught.
“We talked about this, we watched it on film, and I think until our players kind of saw it in person, I don’t want to say they didn’t believe it, but they didn’t get a sense of how well they can shoot it,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters.
The visitors passed the ball well, took advantage of slow shifts on defense, and made the Buckeyes pay early on. Guard Destiny Howell deserves a lot of that credit with a 29-point game on 5-for-7 shooting from beyond the arc. The graduate senior hit her first four attempts from deep before showing she was, in fact, human in the third quarter.
At the end of the first quarter Thursday night, the Badgers led by six points, which is nothing new. It is the eighth time in 10 Big Ten games that Ohio State entered the second quarter with a deficit. Only lopsided victories against the Purdue Boilermakers and Penn State Nittany Lions saw the Buckeyes carry a lead into the second quarter.
Advertisement
It goes beyond the Big Ten. Ohio State fell behind against No. 1 UConn, then-No. 21 West Virginia, No. 10 TCU, and non-ranked games against Belmont, Toledo, and Northern Kentucky.
An overlooked piece of the problem is that basketball is, normally, a four-quarter game, unless there is overtime. This conference season, Ohio State opponents outscored the Buckeyes 165-119 in the first quarter of games, giving teams, on average, a 4.6-point advantage, which is not much.
In response, Ohio State outscored opponents by 10.2 points per game from the second quarter through the final buzzer. There are two things getting them there — defense and point guard Jaloni Cambridge.
“We were very poised towards the end of the game, just getting them down low in the shot clock, and then even in our 22 [full court defense setup] getting the 10-second calls and making them turn the ball over, just being better in the second half, and as the game went on, to take pride in our defense.”
Advertisement
Ohio State forced a Big Ten season high 25 turnovers from Wisconsin, and 18 came after the first quarter. The Buckeyes showed that with adjustments, first-quarter performances are easily forgotten. In the second quarter, Howell had five points, which were the only points Wisconsin scored in the quarter.
Offensively, the second quarter did not feature much from Jaloni Cambridge. The guard had one assist and no points as the sophomore’s two early fouls put her on the bench for seven minutes of the period. It was almost as if McGuff wanted the team to come back without the guard who had not sat for seven minutes in a game since the Buckeyes beat the Rutgers Scarlet Knights 71-49 on Jan. 4, 2026, despite picking up early fouls in many games this season.
That changed in the second half when Cambridge scored 21 of her 29 points on 8-for-11 shooting and 2-for-3 deep shooting. The sophomore did it by attacking the basket and taking what the defense gave her, which is the common response when she is asked about offensive explosions after victories. Jaloni Cambridge’s play even makes her older sister, Kennedy Cambridge, watch in awe.
“We’ve played together almost our entire lives, and to watch her grow, and I mean, I look up to her, which is kind of crazy, because she’s a little bit younger than me, like I wish that I could do the things that she does,” Kennedy Cambridge told reporters. “She brings a different type of love and energy to the game.”
Jaloni Cambridge led Ohio State in nine of 10 Big Ten games this season, with Kennedy Cambridge grabbing the team high against the Purdue Boilermakers. The point guard’s 26.1 points per game average, in conference games, is the highest in the Big Ten.
Advertisement
“I think she [Jaloni Cambridge] has a sense of maturity about her in her sophomore year now,” McGuff said. “I mean, she’s still a young player, but she’s matured quite a bit. She felt very confident in herself heading into the second half and her ability to lead us to a win like this.”
What about the deficits in the two losses? Ohio State is the only Big Ten team to lose to the UCLA Bruins by less than 10 points, which, considering the tear of head coach Cori Close’s team, is some kind of accomplishment. More recently, the Iowa Hawkeyes got off to a 10-point lead after the first quarter on the way to a 21-point victory on Sunday.
Not every deficit turns into a lead, and as tournament play hits the schedule in a little over a month at the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament that follows, can Ohio State afford to consistently keep adjusting to opponents from behind?
