No. 21 Ohio State women’s basketball won its seventh game in a row on Sunday, an 85-60 victory over the Toledo Rockets of the Mid-American Conference. For the third game in a row, though, there was little
to convince outsiders that the Buckeyes are a team prepared for Big Ten play.
“I think they’re a little better than the last game,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters before he paused for a couple of seconds to build tension and comedic effect for what came next. “That’s not hard to do.”
The low bar of McGuff’s expectations was the 94-62 win over the Northern Kentucky Norse of the Horizon League. In that game, Ohio State went into halftime down five points. On Sunday against Toledo, Ohio State had a four-point lead. It was better, statistically, but still far away from where the Buckeyes hoped to be with conference play coming in less than two weeks when the No. 4 UCLA Bruins come to Columbus on Dec. 28.
Normally, it is point guard Jaloni Cambridge who ends up turning the game back in Ohio State’s direction, but against the Rockets, it was her older sister, and fellow guard, Kennedy Cambridge. The redshirt junior had a career day with 23 points on 10-of-15 shooting. That eclipsed Cambridge’s previous 17-point scoring high against the Iowa Hawkeyes back on Feb. 17, 2025.
In the preseason, Cambridge talked about wanting to be more aggressive on offense, especially with the transfer of forward Cotie McMahon. Sunday was the first true example of that for the guard. For Cambridge, there is still room to do more, even though it is not always on her mind.
“I feel like I show up when I need to show up,” said Cambridge. “I don’t feel like every single game I need to have 15 points, 20 points. I do like the little things. If it comes, it comes; if it doesn’t, we don’t worry about it. We put our heads down, and we grind.”
Both Cambridge sisters are leaders on the team, both on and off the court. On the court, that is undeniable. Jaloni Cambridge leads the team with 20.6 points and 3.6 assists per game. Kennedy Cambridge leads the Buckeyes, the Big Ten, and is third in the nation with 4.6 steals per game. Off the court, the two guards are vocal leaders who have tough conversations with their team when the game is not going their way.
What does Kennedy Cambridge actually say in those private locker room moments?
“Can I curse?” Cambridge asked the Ohio State Sports Information Director. After she received a quick “No,” Cambridge adjusted. “Get your ish together. We’re all good. We all were brought here for a reason. So it’s not a matter of what you can’t do. It’s a matter of what you will do.”
Ohio State’s current struggles are not about whether the team can do it. It’s about whether the team wants to do it. For the first 20 minutes of the last three games, the answer is a clear no.
A bright spot in the game was Cambridge’s offense. The guard hit 18 of those 23 points inside the paint, and six of those 18 came off turnovers, on the fast break. After the game, Cambridge downplayed that work, but efficient shooting is not something that easily comes by this season for the Buckeyes — especially from beyond the arc.
The Buckeyes are 17th out of 18 Big Ten teams in three-point shooting efficiency at 28.5%. Sunday helped bring that figure down with 3-of-15 shooting from deep, coming in at 20%. It is an especially difficult statistic to take for Ohio State, considering nearly all of the 11 players on the roster can shoot from deep.
Cambridge tried two three-point attempts in the first quarter and stopped taking them for the remainder of the game. The guard kept to her strengths and attacked inside the paint whenever she could. All with a new injury on the guard’s left hand.
“I hurt the top of my hand, and so that was already wrapped,” Cambridge told reporters. “See my two middle fingers right here? They’re huge. So then I had to wrap that way. So I really depended on my right hand today.”
Normally known for defensive work, Cambridge did not trade off the ball work for points. Even with an injured hand, Cambridge picked up four steals in the win. That is now seven games in a row where Cambridge has had at least four steals in a game.
Ohio State’s record for steals in a season is 115 by guard Yvette Angel back in the 1984-85 season. At Cambridge’s current pace of 4.6 steals per game, she will have 138 at the end of the regular season. All Cambridge needs to match the record is 69 steals or a 3.5 steals per game pace through the remaining 20 games of the season. That is only if the Buckeyes do not make the 15-team Big Ten Tournament field or miss out on postseason basketball, which would both be a shocking development for the talent of the 25-26 Buckeyes.
So far this season, Cambridge is clearly doing the work needed for Ohio State to be successful. For McGuff, there needs to be more of that throughout the entire roster.
“Everybody’s got to really, whether you’re on a bench, on the floor, show up to be ready to do your job, and really impose how we want to play the game from the tip,” said McGuff. “We really haven’t done that in the last couple games.”
