The usual plan for Ohio State women’s basketball is to hit near the roster-size max, redshirt a handful of players for developmental purposes, and then rotate around 10 players into meaningful game moments.
This is not the usual season for the Buckeyes.
Head coach Kevin McGuff’s 11-player roster, with only five athletes who saw time on the court for the Buckeyes last season and eight players either a sophomore or newer, will have growing pains. Also, until Big Ten play picks up in December, it will have to include different looks and combinations for the coaching staff to find a sweet spot. Sunday’s season opener against Coppin State showed a little bit of where McGuff’s head is at in those decisions early in the season.
Starters
The team did not share the starting lineup on social media, and live stats did not include the first group of five to suit up before the jump. Both of those absences of information could have been coincidental or a purposeful tease for fans and media alike, waiting to see McGuff’s decision.
Either way, guards Jaloni Cambridge and Chance Gray were no shock. The other three had reasons for surprise.
Center Elsa Lemmilä, who came off two off-season surgeries on her foot and knee, doubted herself earlier in the week in terms of how she felt physically to play. Lemmilä played 26 minutes, the second most on the team, and had 6 points, 4 rebounds, and 2 blocks, although that block total did not include other deflections that looked an awful lot like blocks, but were not scored that way for the 6-foot-6 Finnish big.
Next to Lemmilä was redshirt freshman Kylee Kitts, who is fighting an undisclosed injury. McGuff had options in the four role. Was the coach going to go with four guards? Kitts showed why she earned the responsibility with play inside, with her height advantage over Coppin State, and her ability to spread the floor when the forward hit a three-point shot in the second quarter.
“I think Kylee [Kitts] obviously showed some of her talent,” said McGuff. “Now this is the first college game she’s ever played today, but you can see the talent that she has, and it just gives us a little more size and length with her on the court with Elsa [Lemmilä], and so that gave her a leg up on a couple of the other people for right now.”
The biggest surprise of the five came in the third guard role, and not because of a lack of skill or work effort. It’s strictly precedence.
Senior guard T’yana Todd, who transferred from Boston College this offseason, was a no-brainer starter for what McGuff likes in a player. Todd is a deep shooter, the best in the ACC last season, a three-level scorer, and has experience — something lacking in this team.
Instead, McGuff went with Kennedy Cambridge. It was only two seasons ago that McGuff sat the older Cambridge sister for the entire season to earn a redshirt. Last season, Kennedy came off the bench, outside of a brief starting stint early in the season when forward Cotie McMahon picked up a short-term injury.
Kennedy Cambridge more than rewarded that decision in a game that will make it difficult for McGuff to consider moving the redshirt junior to a bench role. In 27 minutes, tied with her younger sister Jaloni, Kennedy Cambridge led all players with seven steals on top of 5-of-9 shooting and 11 points.
Player Rotation
All of the starters in the Coppin State game proved McGuff’s decisions to be correct, but that might change from one game to the next while the team figures out what works best. That was clear in the first 10 minutes, when, for the first time in recent history, McGuff threw all 11 players into the game in the first quarter.
Normally, a rotation of starters and a few bench players dominates the first three quarters. Then, McGuff goes deeper into his bench late in games if the team is either up or down big. On Sunday, every player had at least two minutes, and there was no consistency on who was playing with whom.
“We’re still, because of not having everybody out there, still in the process of trying to figure out, okay, who’s gonna start the game,” said McGuff. “We discussed that. But then, what the best rotations are and who’s going to put it all together? Because we just haven’t seen enough of that in practice. And so we were still trying to play some different combinations to give ourselves a chance to evaluate that and see who might play well with each other.”
Maybe it was the pent-up energy of waiting until the last day of the first week of the season to get on the court in a meaningful game, but that rotation surged to a 23-11 lead. It did not look like a disjointed effort, and Ohio State went 9-of-18 from the floor and held Coppin State to 20% shooting. The Buckeyes went heavily inside with 14 points in the paint, and it looked like smooth sailing.
The first player off the bench was not the two bench players with at least a year of college basketball under their belts, Todd or Ava Watson, with the latter missing a lot of time last week due to an undisclosed illness. Instead, McGuff went with freshman Dasha Biriuk, someone the coach applauded earlier in the week for her offense, but mentioned how defensively she has work to do to learn the system.
Biriuk, fellow freshman Bryn Martin, and forwards Ella Hobbs and Seini Henry each played two minutes in the first period. While it was not a lot of time to make an impact, it showed that McGuff is serious about wanting to see how his team plays in real games.
In the second quarter, the waters got rocky, and McGuff opted for a more traditional rotation. Every starter played at least six minutes, and Todd was the lone player from the bench to play at least half of the quarter. Martin and redshirt freshman Seini Henry did not make it onto the court.
That quarter was the worst of the game for Ohio State. The team opted for quick shots, and nearly half of their 19 attempts came from beyond the arc, where the Buckeyes went 1-of-9. It shrunk a 12-point lead at the start of the quarter down to just six at halftime.
Normally, when the Scarlet and Gray have a tough quarter, McGuff challenges his top players to get the team out of it. Last season in Ann Arbor, McGuff played his starting five for every minute of the second half and was rewarded when they came back from 16 points to beat their rivals, the Michigan Wolverines.
A six-point lead against Coppin State is a different situation entirely, but McGuff brought his starting five out for the second half. That is when the Cambridge sisters put the team on their shoulders and shot their lead back up to 17 points.
McGuff mostly rotated through seven players in the third quarter, where each one played at least five minutes. Todd and sophomore Watson played half of the quarter.
What’s Next
The starting group, who played how many minutes, and when they see the floor are all up in the air. This is not an Ohio State squad rich in experience with names etched into the starting lineup before the season. That is evident in the up-and-down performance in what ultimately became a lopsided victory. For McGuff and the Buckeyes, the end may not justify the means.
There will be tough decisions game-by-game. There could be different starters on Thursday against Bellarmine, as McGuff continues to tweak personnel; every decision will have a ripple effect.
Will Todd have a chance to show the player she was in the ACC last season? Has Kennedy Cambridge cemented herself in the starting five? How will Lemmilä and Kitts improve as they continue their returns from injury?
Normally, a lot of this is ironed out in the preseason. However, again, this is not a usual season for the Buckeyes.
“We honestly just found out our rotations and how this was going to work,” Kennedy Cambridge said. “And obviously, some people were hurt, some people were down. Now everybody’s back healthy, but other people had to step up, other people had to play different positions. And I think that that is a positive for our team.”
