No. 21 Ohio State women’s basketball has two more games before the Christmas holiday, and it starts Thursday against the Norfolk State Spartans of the Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference. It is the third game in a line of four mid-major opponents that are more or less a testing ground for Buckeye improvement.
Head coach Kevin McGuff’s side enters Thursday with questions surrounding a lack of shots going through the rim and a big question for the selection of bigs. That and a corduroy hat lead into the Thursday night
MEAC matchup.
Three-point shots fading away
A bonus for the Buckeyes entering the 2025-26 season was the ability for nearly anyone on the 11-player roster to make a three-point shot. From starting point guard Jaloni Cambridge up to center Elsa Lemmilä, Ohio State touted a roster destined to stretch defenses and make shots from beyond the perimeter.
The opposite is happening in Columbus.
Ohio State started the season with 8.3 shots made from beyond the arc in the first seven games. Away from the Schottenstein Center, at the Baha Mar Pink Flamingo Championship, the Buckeyes hit 10 against West Virginia in the tournament title game and repeated it against Niagara University.
It appeared that the Scarlet and Gray were on the rise and starting to hit their shots. In terms of efficiency, Ohio State shot 31.2% from deep in those first seven games, which still sat the Buckeyes near the middle of the 18-team Big Ten conference, but double-digit three-point games indicated that Ohio State might have turned a corner.
In the last three games, the Buckeyes have 11 combined three-point shots made on 19.6% shooting. It dropped Ohio State to 17th place in the Big Ten at 28.5%.
“Coach [McGuff] talked about it in post-game today,” guard T’Yana Todd said following the Buckeyes’ 85-60 win over the Toledo Rockets on Sunday. “We’re making shots in practice. I think you just got to stay disciplined and apply it to the game.”
Defensively, the Buckeyes are doing just as well. Ohio State is 17th in the conference in three-point defense, with 32.6% of opponent shots landing from beyond the arc.
Despite the difficult numbers, McGuff’s side is still winning because of the level of opponents scheduled this season. A strong offensive performance by Jaloni Cambridge or a consistent flow of turnovers going Ohio State’s way is enough to defeat the Toledos and Niagara’s of Division I basketball.
That will change when the No. 4 UCLA Bruins come to Columbus on Dec. 28 to start the rest of the Big Ten calendar. Shooting is literally a hit-or-miss game. When a team is on, it’s hard to stop. When it’s off, it needs other abilities to compensate. If the Buckeyes hope to compete near the top of the Big Ten, the three-point shot has to be part of the equation.
Big personnel questions
There was cautious optimism about the Buckeyes’ interior game before the season began. The group was young, all underclassmen and three about to play in their first year of NCAA eligibility, but their size and ability stood out. Now, with a third of the regular season in the books, it is hard to tell which direction coach Kevin McGuff is headed.
Redshirt freshmen Ella Hobbs and Kylee Kitts joined sophomore center Elsa Lemmilä, which gave the Buckeyes size the program has not had in the last four seasons. All between 6’4” and 6’6”, it looked like rebounding woes and an easy lane to the basket that became Ohio State’s calling card on defense were on their way to being a thing of the past.
The cautious part of that optimism was injuries and lack of experience. Lemmilä missed most of the summer and preseason in surgery recovery from two different operations — one on her knee and the other on her foot. Hobbs, who missed last season with an ACL tear, was also slow to return and had the added pressure of playing in her first season of college basketball.
McGuff started both Lemmilä and Kitts in the opening game against Coppin State. Lemmilä started the next two games until the Finnish center sat against Kent State to rest and recover from leg pain. It was clear that Lemmilä was not 100% at the start of the season, when a player should be at their healthiest.
Kitts started every game for Ohio State this season and showed the promise that initially made her a top-25 recruit in the 2025 class before Kitts moved eligibility up a season and received a redshirt from the Florida Gators.
Absent from that conversation was forward Ella Hobbs. McGuff gave the redshirt freshman first-half minutes in the first two games, routs against Coppin State and Bellarmine, but then it stopped. Hobbs entered games when Ohio State was either up big, down big, or off the bench in the lone absence for Lemmilä — Until Sunday.
Hobbs came in and used her size and presence inside to grab offensive rebounds and made any Toledo Rockets interior offense think twice about going to the basket.
“We want to make sure we continue to get her [Hobbs] some minutes, because I think she can be valuable,” McGuff told reporters following the win. “Her size and strength are going to be needed when we get into Big Ten play.”
There is no McGuff precedent set saying all three will see the court, and the fourth forward, redshirt forward Seini Henry, has not seen the court unless the game is out of reach. Plus, the forward’s smaller stature makes Henry more of a small forward than an interior presence.
Kitts does not show signs of leaving the starting lineup anytime soon, so it appears that Lemmilä and Hobbs will play to earn minutes as either Kitts’ backup or partner on the court. Thursday could show which way McGuff is leaning.
Jacy Sheldon’s return
On Wednesday, the Buckeyes had added help at practice when former Ohio State guard Jacy Sheldon played against the current roster. The Ohio State women’s basketball fan group attended practice, where they saw the current Washington Mystics guard go up against head coach Kevin McGuff’s current roster.
Last season, McGuff hired Sheldon as the Director of Player Development. During the offseason, Sheldon told Land-Grant Holy Land her hope to return to the role, but she is not listed on the team staff this season and has not made any appearances at any of the seven Buckeye home games.
Sheldon completed her second season of WNBA basketball in the fall with the Mystics, her third team in two years. The guard joined Athletes Unlimited, a league that competes for four weeks, where each week the teams change, and players all accumulate points for individual play. At the end of the season, one player wins the crown as the league champion. The 2026 season takes place in Nashville, Tennessee, and after scrimmages, team captains draft the first teams on Feb. 1, 2026.
614 Day
Baseball and soccer get to celebrate 614 Day each year, the number that matches the Columbus area code. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes and their fans, no collegiate sports are happening in the summer when kids leave campus en masse.
Ohio State improvised and will celebrate the city of Columbus on Thursday against Norfolk State for the 6:30 p.m. ET jump ball. The first 500 fans in attendance receive a red corduroy hat that says 614 in bold letters across the front.
For those who do not need a hat or in-person basketball on a cold weeknight in Columbus, the game airs live on B1G+.
