When Ohio State women’s basketball played the Indiana Hoosiers in the Big Ten regular season, the Hoosiers out rebounded the Buckeyes 30-21, despite a rare size advantage for the Scarlet and Gray. Ohio State still won the game after it overcame an early 15-point deficit thanks to 34 points off 26 forced turnovers. On Wednesday in the Big Ten Tournament, the Buckeyes went down six points this time before they outscored the Hoosiers 83-53 to coast to an easy victory that extended Ohio State’s tournament.
This time it was not in spite of rebounds, it was because of them.
The Buckeyes out rebounded the Hoosiers by 12, and 19 of their 45 rebounds came on the offensive glass, the team’s record for offensive boards in the 2025-26 Big Ten season. Back on Jan. 22, 2026, Ohio State could only muster six on offense. In other words, Thursday was not a different story, it was a different book.
“It helps when your six-six big has 13 rebounds by herself, and everybody else can help her,” forward Kylee Kitts told Land-Grant Holy Land.
Center Elsa Lemmilä was the main piece of the Buckeyes’ rebounding emphasis. Throughout the season, a question around Lemmilä was her ability to take contact inside and muscle her way into boards. That was not a problem Thursday. In the first half, the Finnish big had 11 of her 13 rebounds, including five on offense. Indiana tried to adjust to her presence, but Lemmilä still grabbed rebounds against two or three Hoosiers at a time.
Look at the latter part of the 25-26 season and the results are not too much of a surprise. Thursday was the fifth double-digit rebounding game in a row for Lemmilä. Add three blocks against Indiana onto her Big Ten leading 65 on the season and Ohio State now has an improving defensive foothold in the paint. The big’s early season inconsistency and discomfort that stemmed from two offseason surgeries is a distant memory.
“Last season was not my most confident season, and I think I took a step back after my injury, but it’s definitely getting back, and I think I’m in a better position this year than I was last year,” Lemmilä told reporters.
Lemmilä’s outstanding performance against Indiana stemmed not only from an emphasis on it from a team perspective but her own early struggles. Lemmilä missed her first three shot attempts, which can sometimes deter a younger player. The Finnish big instead used it to focus on other areas.
“I wasn’t making my layups, my shots weren’t going in, so I thought I wanted to impact me somehow, and I know I can always do that by rebounding,” Lemmilä said. So that’s what I did.“
When Lemmilä went to the bench, Kitts entered the game and made up for the absence. After the redshirt freshman missed six games due to a shoulder strain suffered against the TCU Horned Frogs on Jan. 19, 2026, Thursday was arguably Kitts’ best performance since she returned on Feb. 8. Kitts scored nine points, which included a second half three-point shot halfway through the fourth quarter, her first since the injury. On the boards, Kitts had six in her 20 minutes on the court, and two offensively.
Tried all it could, Indiana did not have anyone to match up with the Buckeyes’ interior play. Point guard Jaloni Cambridge was second on the team with eight rebounds, while her older sister Kennedy Cambridge grabbed six. The inside presence went beyond rebounds for Jaloni Cambridge who also had a block on Indiana forward Edessa Noyan, who stands eight inches taller than the Buckeye point guard.
Head coach Kevin McGuff will sometimes talk about the two ways in which a team earns extra possessions — rebounds or forced turnovers. For the last four years, the full court press was a pivotal piece of Ohio State’s success with two Big Ten regular season titles and a 2023 trip to the Elite Eight. Against Indiana on Thursday, Ohio State had both with 21 points on 15 forced turnovers. The 24-point margin of victory is a fair assessment of how the game went for the Buckeyes and how tough it was for the Hoosiers.
Now, can the Buckeyes continue this success?
On Friday, Ohio State has the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a team that did to them what the Buckeyes did Thursday to the Hoosiers. In Minnesota’s 71-64 win, the Golden Gophers only gave the ball away 11 times and won the battle on the boards 47-32. Ohio State’s six offensive rebounds in that game is the side’s lowest total in a game this season. All that and 32 points in the paint thanks in part to 18 points for center Sophie Hart showed that there is still a lot to learn for the young group of interior players for the Buckeyes.
“Or defense will have to be really, really good,” McGuff told reporters. “A little bit of a different way than it was today in that we got — we weren’t real effective defensively around the basket at Minnesota, and we’ll have to be much better with our interior defense to win.”
