After three non-conference games against mid-major opponents, Thursday is No. 17 Ohio State women’s basketball’s first top-25 matchup of the season.
It isn’t just any top-25 matchup either. It’s against the No. 4 UConn Huskies, the program with a record 12 national championships and an impressive record against the Buckeyes.
Last season, in Connecticut, the Scarlet and Gray fell hard in a 100-68 loss. What is different about this season that gives the Buckeyes a chance?
Plus, Sarah Strong and a weakness
exploited in UConn’s first game of the season against a Big Ten opponent.
Sarah Strong
There is a tier of star in college basketball that rises above the rest. Players that are only in college basketball because of the WNBA’s entry requirements.
They are names like Texas Longhorns’ Madison Booker and USC Trojans’ JuJu Watkins. Before the Buckeyes face both of those stars, they face the name that rose above all names last season — forward Sarah Strong.
To say that Strong played well against the Buckeyes last season is an understatement. Strong had the best game of her college career on her way to the 2025-26 Naismith Award given to the best player in college basketball.
Against Ohio State, Strong had a stat line of 29 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals and 3 blocks. She has since scored 39, on Sunday against the Iowa Hawkeyes, but the overall impact Strong had last season against the Buckeyes is second to no other performance in her NCAA career’s third season.
Strong is a 6-foot-2 forward who can play like a point guard. The big shoots from deep, battles inside and can find open teammates with her passing ability. That is only on offense.
Strong also led the Big East with 3.4 steals last season and matched Ohio State guard Kennedy Cambridge’s 130 steals on the season. That put Strong second all-time in UConn program history for a single season.
If there was a way to stop the forward, it probably would have happened. Ohio State showed last season that they were not up to the task of guarding Strong, but how can this season be different?
For one, Strong no longer has guard Azzi Fudd. Since she left college for the WNBA, Strong became the on-court leader of the Huskies. That has made Strong carry more of the offensive workload. Strong averages 23.7 points per game, a career high for the junior.
In addition, the forward is taking more deep shots than ever with 6.7 attempted per game, up 2.7 from last year when Fudd carried a lot of the deep shooting responsibilities for head coach Geno Auriemma’s team.
That does not mean that UConn struggled for talent. UConn returned three starters and added Jovana Popovic from the Serbian National Team and No. 2 overall prospect Olivia Vukosa, who chose the Huskies over the Buckeyes.
There is another area that was a weakness last season and could be a strength on Thursday.
Paint Play
In UConn’s second game of the season, the Huskies were in Big Ten country, up in Ann Arbor, Michigan against the Wolverines. Now, head coach Kim Barnes Arico’s unit is not a big group, but played aggressively and were able to exploit the UConn defense and get into the paint.
Michigan scored 36 points in their 77-66 win inside the paint.
For the Buckeyes, interior play has become a strength with the healthy duo of center Elsa Lemmilä and forward Kylee Kitts. Last season, in Kitts’ third college start, the then redshirt freshman showed why she started so early and that began against UConn.
In a game where the Buckeyes struggled, Kitts shined. Part of that struggle was the play of Lemmilä, who was injured in the game after two offseason surgeries.
Now, Lemmilä is healthy and has connected with point guard Jaloni Cambridge consistently over the first three games of the season. Last season, Lemmilä scored 2 points, 4 rebounds and 4 turnovers in 20 minutes. That led head coach Kevin McGuff to put Lemmilä on the bench to recover from injury.
Now, as close to healthy as she has been in her third season of college basketball, the center is 18-for-19 on the season with 16.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game, all of which are career highs.
Ohio State will need more from Lemmilä and Kitts inside. With the size of Strong, Blanca Quiñonez and Vukosa, the Buckeyes can’t rely on Jaloni Cambridge to force her way inside for all of the team’s points. Last season, Cambridge had a team high 17 points but only one assist.
The No. 2 overall 2024 freshman prospect Cambridge needs a stat line much closer to that of the No. 1 recruit from that same season in Strong. Even then, Cambridge cannot do it alone.
One Year Older
When Ohio State traveled to Connecticut last November, it was a young roster. After upperclassmen starters Taylor Thierry and Cotie McMahon graduated and transferred, respectively, the younger class of Buckeyes suddenly became the everyday starters.
That youth showed when the two teams met in the third game of the 25-26 campaign.
“We have to go out there and play our game. It’ll be good for us,” Cambridge told reporters. “I’m glad that we’re playing not just UConn, but a lot of these good teams, a lot of these teams that have been experienced in the past early, just because we gotta get ready for the Big Ten.”
The Buckeye team that struggled last season in the first two months bounced back to earn the No. 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and played the UCLA Bruins within seven points, beat only by Michigan’s narrow three-point defeat at the eventual National Champions hands.
However, Ohio State has not had many opportunities to show how they can compete with the best in the country this season. The UIC Flames, Central Michigan Chippewas and Mercyhurst Lakers are all outside of the Power Four conferences and are nowhere close to a like-for-like to prepare for the Huskies.
That extra year of experience for the Buckeyes will have to come out in smart and patient play on offense and keeping up the pace on defense.
The Lakers’ passing exposed Ohio State in stints on Sunday, made them run in the half-court and had spells of good shooting to make pockets of the game close, even if the final scoreline heavily favored McGuff’s team. The Buckeyes cannot give Strong open three-point looks and close down shooters as their half-court zone moves from one sideline to the other.
They will have to do that for all 40 minutes to turn last year’s rout into a distant memory.
“it’s a great opportunity against obviously a very good team early in the year,” McGuff told reporters. “But I think we’re going to have to be more consistent than we’ve been in any of our games to be successful.”
Ohio State is 1-7 against Connecticut all-time, and lost twice at home. Only the 2023 upset win over the Huskies in the Sweet Sixteen gives the program a positive against Auriemma’s side.
A win on Thursday, for this Ohio State team, would go a long away in turning the Buckeyes into a team that the country begins to pay attention to.
