Ohio State women’s basketball repeating as Big Ten champs is an unreasonable expectation
ThomasCostello via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images
The Buckeyes have a talented team, but not enough to eclipse newcomers and retooled existing teams
From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant Holy Land will be writing articles around a different theme every week. This week is all about our Unreasonable Expectations. You can catch up on all of the Theme Week content here and all of our Unreasonable Expectations here.
Ohio State women’s basketball looked like a team on the rocks following the end of the 2023-24 season. The team’s strong veteran foundation left, players transferred out and the three-year run including two conference titles and deep NCAA Tournament runs felt like it was drifting further into the rearview mirror. The Buckeyes responded in a big way, but it's unreasonable to expect the program to repeat that kind of conference success.
Last season, the Buckeyes had momentum to spare in the second half of the year. After winning its first 14 games in 2024, the Scarlet and Gray defeated bitter rivals in the
Michigan Wolverines to secure an outright Big Ten regular season championship. Then things changed.
Head coach Kevin McGuff’s side lost three of the following four games, which isn’t great to do in the postseason. It began with an overwhelming defeat to the
Maryland Terrapins, the first time a McGuff-led Ohio State side lost its first game of the tournament when it entered as a No. 1 seed, an 82-61 defeat where the Terps dominated on the boards.
After defeating the Maine Black Bears in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Ohio State squandered a double-digit lead in the second quarter to lose to the No. 7 ranked
Duke Blue Devils 75-63.
With that defeat, the careers of three Buckeye starters came to an end. Guards Jacy Sheldon and Celeste Taylor, along with forward Rebeka Mikulasikova, all bid farewell to Columbus, Ohio. Joining them was forward Taiyier Parks, who came in off the bench for paint presence in her lone season playing for McGuff.
In the portal, guards Diana Collins, Emma Shumate, and Rikki Harris all left. Hurting the most for Buckeye fans was Harris, who played four seasons in scarlet and gray, joining the college ranks with Sheldon and Mikulasikova. Plus, the potential of Shumate and Harris to fill in for the lost experience vanished, leaving fans wondering what was next for the program.
Then McGuff swapped his coaching hat for his general manager hat.
To say the Buckeyes restocked is an understatement. Ohio State was an early winner of the transfer portal, nationally. McGuff added two Power Five Conference players who brought game-changing impacts to their previous schools.
Guard Chance Gray swapped Oregon Duck green for Buckeyes scarlet and gray. The sophomore started all but one game for the Ducks in her first two NCAA seasons. A few days later, it was 6-foot-3 forward Ajae Petty joining out of the
Kentucky Wildcats’ program. Petty averaged 14.2 points and 10.6 rebounds for a struggling Kentucky side in her lone season as a starter.
Photo by Andrew Wevers/Getty Images
They joined a top 10 ranked 2024 freshman recruiting class, headlined by point guard Jaloni Cambridge, fresh off a National Championship performance where it was Cambridge providing the spark for Montverde Academy.
Overall, five recruits enter Ohio State this fall. Of those, three fall in ESPN’s top 100 recruits in the nation. Cambridge, the No. 2 overall recruit, stands alongside guard Ava Watson and forward Ella Hobbs on that list. Plus, forward Seini Hicks and center Elsa Lemmila.
Add all that to a returning core group including forwards Cotie McMahon, Taylor Thierry, and guard Madison Greene and it doesn’t feel much like a rebuild.
Ohio State isn’t going to miss repeating as the conference champions because of a lack of talent, it is going to be because the other teams around it have a hefty advantage in chemistry and familiarity.
Look no further than the new Big Ten teams from out west. The UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans join the conference to not only stretch the B1G from coast to coast but to move the strength of the conference’s women’s basketball teams into another stratosphere.
USC won the final
Pac-12 tournament, upsetting the regular season-winning Stanford Cardinals, then followed it up with a run to the Elite Eight, before falling to the
UConn Huskies. Led by freshman Juju Watkins, a star who forced the professional basketball ranks to consider if underclassmen should be allowed to enter the
WNBA Draft.
As a freshman, Watkins was a First Team AP All-American, Ann Meyers-Drysdale Award winner and averaged 27.1 points and 7.3 rebounds per game.
Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images
Then there’s the Bruins, with 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts and a team with only two upperclassmen that went to the Sweet Sixteen, after being ranked in the top 5 much of the season.
Ohio State faced, and lost, to both of those sides last season. To the Buckeyes’ credit, the Trojans were the first game of the season, when nobody had college tape on Watkins; although that might not have changed too much of the final outcome.
Those two sides are favorites to win the Big Ten in its first seasons out of the Pac-12. For the reasons listed above, and more, it makes all the sense in the world.
Plus, existing Big Ten teams like the Maryland Terrapins and
Indiana Hoosiers lost players but made up for it in the portal. Head coach Brenda Frese added seven transfers to the Terps. Including former
Rutgers Scarlet Knight standout Kaylene Smikle, who won Second Team All-Big Ten honors as a freshman. Plus the Atlantic-10 Player of the Year, two former UConn recruits, and the Big East Co-Defensive Player of the Year.
All that on a team that Frese always has in the conversation around the postseason.
For the Buckeyes to compete with other teams at the top of the conference, it’ll have to get on the same page quickly. If it's February and Ohio State is still figuring itself out, it’ll be a tough road to a strong postseason.
Something that will help is a lighter non-conference schedule. Facing the Trojans, UCLA Bruins and
Tennessee Volunteers before the Big Ten calendar made sense last year, because on paper the Buckeyes were stronger than its been since before the pandemic. Avoiding some of those marquee matchups, like the Buckeyes did in the 2021-22 season, gives a new group time to find itself.
The sooner the Scarlet and Gray put the pieces together, the higher the likelihood that Ohio State puts the conference on warning.
Continue reading...
️ 
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25451070/2043245948.jpg "Oregon v Colorado")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25451068/1777334153.jpg "USC v Ohio State")
