Over the last four games between Ohio State women’s basketball and the Iowa Hawkeyes, the two sides played close matchups, two overtime games and neither side won by more than 10 points. All of that changed Sunday in Iowa City, Iowa when Ohio State struggled for 35 minutes against head coach Jan Jensen’s Hawkeyes.
Jay-Z once said “I never lose. I either win or I learn,” and the Scarlet and Gray had plenty of opportunities to learn against the No. 10 team in the country. Here are three lessons from the Buckeyes’ second Big Ten loss of the season.
Depth issue
With the absence of forward Kylee Kitts, the redshirt freshman who leads the Buckeyes with 7.1 rebounds per game, there is a clear issue with Ohio State playing to its identity. At the start of the year, and especially since Dec. 28, 2025 against the UCLA Bruins, McGuff went with a pair of bigs to shore up a part of the court that plagued the Buckeyes in recent memory.
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That meant three guards who take care of point guard, shooting guard and a third guard on the court who excels in multiple areas. Then a finesse forward and towering center who can play off each other, take attention away from defenders to let the other one work and improved rebounding.
Kitts’ absence means that identity has to change, and that was evident in Iowa City. Until the 6-foot-4 forward returns, the Buckeyes only have two interior players who McGuff trusts to put on the court, and they both play the same role. Center Elsa Lemmilä and forward Ella Hobbs both bring size and presence inside the paint, but play more traditional paint positions.
Ohio State faced a duo of bigs Sunday in senior forward Hannah Stuelke and center Ava Heiden and Kitts’ absence was especially clear. To Lemmilä‘s credit, the sophomore was not paired up with Stuelke unless there was a switch on defense. The center had five blocks, which made her the 12th Buckeye to have at least 100 blocks in program history, but Heiden and Stuelke split 36 points evenly and grabbed a combined 23 rebounds.
Stuelke’s impact was especially difficult to overcome with one of the four rotating guards trying to play against the 6-foot-4 senior one-on-one.
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Simply put, it was a matchup disaster.
The Buckeyes went into the season with an 11-player roster and only three forwards, with one center. The other two forwards, Hobbs and redshirt freshman Seini Henry, have not been given many opportunities to shine this season.
Hobbs played 11 minutes on Sunday as the backup for Lemmilä, which is the most minutes the redshirt freshman had since Dec. 22, 2025. Henry has 12 total minutes in four Big Ten appearances, and only appeared in three of the last seven conference appearances.
It was a gamble to put the interior play in the hands of only two people, both of whom already had injury issues this offseason. Even though Kitts’ absence was based on a freak accident, it proves that there is no like-for-like answer coming in to save the Buckeyes. Should Kitts be out for a long period of time, Ohio State needs to adjust quickly or risk similar issues down the regular season stretch.
Scrapping
For the Buckeyes to have a chance against the Iowa Hawkeyes, they needed to play effectively in the press, use their speed and make the simple things difficult for the Hawkeye offense. That did not happen on Sunday.
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Ohio State forced 15 turnovers, the lowest total this season in Big Ten play for the Buckeyes. In addition, those only turned into 13 points while the Hawkeyes forced 11 turnovers they swapped for 16 points. When the Scarlet and Gray were not trying to stop Stuelke with a smaller guard, they were sprinting in their defensive zone as a team in the top five in assists per game in the country passed circles around the Buckeyes.
“They had at least three threes against the zone, maybe four,” McGuff told reporters. “They were all out of the corner.”
Iowa had 28 assists, and eight came on three-point opportunities. When the Buckeyes went into the zone, in the second quarter, they held Stuelke to no points for the period but also gave up four three-point shots. No matter what the Buckeyes tried to do on defense, Iowa rarely looked bothered in front of a sellout crowd at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
“As a collective, they just got comfortable hitting those three, and they were good shooting three point team,” point guard Jaloni Cambridge told reporters. “We just got to be better, rotate more, communicate more, and then act like we’re bigger, even when we’re small.”
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Cambridge is a good example of acting big, despite standing at 5-foot-7. The poor team showing from Ohio State covered up the first career double-double for Cambridge, who scored 28 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. In the third quarter, the only quarter where Ohio State out rebounded the Hawkeyes, Jaloni Cambridge picked up four of the team’s rebounds.
McGuff, and other college coaches, preach turning defense into offense. For Ohio State, when it does not happen, the problems are cyclical. When the defense is not forcing turnovers, and not turning into easy baskets, the press cannot get set up, since Ohio State waits for a made shot before getting into the havoc-inducing full court defense.
“We’ve won lately by getting a lot of 50/50 balls and rebounds and a lot of loose balls,” McGuff said. “And it’s been the difference of some of these games lately, and we didn’t have it today. So if we’re going to have to play a little smaller with Kylee [Kitts] out, we’ve got to be much scrappier. Use our speed and quickness. And we did not do that today.”
Responding to a defeat
A lot can be said for how a team acts following a loss. Not only in the next game, but how the team feels directly afterwards. Sometimes a win feels like a loss where coaches, then by extension the coach’s players, win a game but want to focus on what needs to improve from one game to the next.
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There are games where the joy is felt following a comeback victory or an exciting finish. Then there are defeats so bad that nobody comes out of the locker room feeling happy. Those rare games sometimes feature a coach who is in more of an “I told you so” attitude at post game media.
None of those things happened after the 21-point loss for the Buckeyes, the team’s worst Big Ten loss this season. Instead, it felt like a team that knew it did not match up well and messed a lot of things up. Coach McGuff, Jaloni Cambridge and Elsa Lemmilä were not downtrodden following the loss. Instead, it appeared more reflective.
There is clarity in knowing what did not go right as opposed to doing everything to the plan and still falling short.
“I told the team, it’s got to be everything you got to win in a place like Iowa against a great team like that, and we didn’t have it,” McGuff said. “I don’t feel like I coached my best game. I don’t think our players played the best game, and a lot of that had to do with Iowa.”
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Iowa head coach Jan Jensen coached the Hawkeyes masterfully. After giving up a 17-point lead, but still winning in overtime over the No. 15 Maryland Terrapins on Thursday, Iowa welcomed Ohio State into Iowa City and did just about everything right. Jensen focused on Stuelke’s mismatch and as soon as the Buckeyes tried to adjust, Jensen had a plan ready to go to attack from the outside.
Jensen did that all while losing her starting senior guard Taylor McCabe on Iowa’s first defensive possession for the entire game. The Hawkeyes took the lessons they learned against Iowa, or earlier in the conference calendar when they were down double-digits to the Indiana Hoosiers, and played arguably their best game of the season.
The Buckeyes have the Wisconsin Badgers, a team that has surprised many teams this season and the ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers, both at home this upcoming week. How Ohio State responds will tell a lot about Sunday’s impact on the team.
