Ohio State women’s basketball traveled to Connecticut on Sunday to face the No. 1 ranked UConn Huskies. With only two mid-major non-conference games before it for the Buckeyes, the weekend matchup was a planned barometer for where Ohio State is this season.
Big Ten voters had them in fifth place but Associated Press top-25 voters left them out for the first time since 2019. Overall, it was a crapshoot on what people saw in the team.
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Sunday showed there is a lot of work to do.
The defending national champions had their way with the Buckeyes in the 100-68 rout. There were spells and moments that highlighted the potential of Ohio State’s team, but the cons outweighed the pros.
After the game, head coach Kevin McGuff did his coaching duty of controlling the damage. McGuff applauded the UConn fans, who nearly filled the PeoplesBank Arena in downtown Hartford, Connecticut. For most of the game, fans stood, chanted and cheered on a day that gave ample opportunity to celebrate the lifting of the program’s 12th national championship banner.
“Every year you talk about kind of where you are to start the season and where you can get to if you continue to improve,” McGuff told reporters. “I think for us, there’s nothing more important than that concept, because we have so many newcomers and young players.”
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Those pockets of bright play from Ohio State, the moments McGuff and the coaching staff can point back to during film review and practice, did show a team with potential.
In that environment, a team with a roster of five players who never stepped foot into an NCAA game until Nov. 9, came out of the gates composed. The calm guard Chance Gray talked about after a Thursday win over Bellarmine was on display as the Buckeyes went ahead four points in the opening seven minutes of the game.
Ohio State held Final Four Player of the Tournament guard Azzi Fudd to 0-of-5 from the floor in the first quarter. Buckeye shots were also falling at a higher clip than Ohio State’s seen all season. At the end of the first quarter, the Buckeyes were down 27-24 in a game that looked manageable.
There were signs of the facade cracking, and that happened inside the paint. Head coach Geno Auriemma leaned on forwards Serah Williams and Sarah Strong to challenge the Buckeye bigs. Even with 6-foot-6 center Elsa Lemmilä and 6-foot-4 forward Kylee Kitts in the paint, the interior play of UConn had its way.
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After all, Strong is the No. 1 player in the 2024 freshman class and averaged 16.4 points and 8.9 rebounds in her first year. The forward is the best player on any team in the country. Williams is a former Wisconsin Badger who won honors for her defensive work in the Big Ten.
UConn exposed a pairing for Ohio State that has the potential to be a great duo, but are tasked with anchoring the post when both of them have three starts under their NCAA belts, after Sunday.
That interior work turned into open shooters when Ohio State’s guards came inside to help, including Strong who made two shots from deep.
Strong put up video game numbers, on the easiest difficulty. The sophomore had a career-high 29 points, a career-high 7 assists, 13 rebounds, 5 steals and 3 blocks. The only thing that could stop her was her own boredom.
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“I mean, you can’t really scout her [Strong],” Jaloni Cambridge told reporters about Strong. “It’s hard to scout her. She can do everything she puts her mind to. She’s very consistent, and I think she’s been like that since high school.”
Williams only played 14 minutes, but had 12 points in that time. Freshman forward Blanca Quiñonez scored 18 off the bench with four rebounds, with two made threes herself.
There is no one in the paint who could have gone up against UConn’s post group successfully. Without experience underneath the basket, Strong and company were going to have their way.
McGuff tried different personnel and even went small with four guards to try and spread the Huskies out, but none of it worked from the second quarter through the final buzzer. Ohio State’s head coach’s only other size option was redshirt freshman Ella Hobbs, who McGuff did not use until the waning minutes of the game.
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For all the Sunday woes, Kitts showed why McGuff has her in the starting lineup so early into her college career. In the first two games of the season, Kitts looked frustrated on the court. That continued in the opening minutes of Sunday’s game, but the freshman adjusted and used her size well in her 33 minutes, the second most for any Buckeye outside of Jaloni Cambridge.
In that time, Kitts scored nine points, grabbed 10 rebounds and added three blocks before she fouled out.
“Having watched her [Kitts] in a couple games now, everyone can see her talent, and think she’s got to get just continue to get comfortable doing what we do,” McGuff said. “And I thought she took a big step today. She played against the best team in the country, and this is probably her best game so far out of the three.”
Ohio State’s defeat on Sunday has the potential to go one of two ways. It will be the game that is the benchmark for the team’s future growth, or the matchup that highlighted the areas of weakness for the Buckeyes’ 2025-26 season.
Measuring the team against Strong, a National Player of the Year candidate, is not necessarily fair for the young Buckeyes, but only McGuff can make sure they learn from it.
