It took a lot for No. 13 Ohio State women’s basketball to even get to an overtime period on Wednesday night. With 10 seconds remaining, No. 8 Michigan Wolverines guard Syla Swords hit what looked like a dagger of a three-point shot for the visitors. The once nine-point lead a little over seven minutes prior shrunk to a single possession, and with 10.9 seconds, the Buckeyes had one more shot to make it — they ended up having three. After misses from guards Chance Gray and Kennedy Cambridge, sophomore
point guard Jaloni Cambridge hit three free throws after an errant foul by the Wolverines with less than a second remaining.
Ohio State took all the excitement and anxiety from the fans and turned it into momentum to start overtime. Ohio State scored seven of the first eight points of the extra five minutes. Then add a quick five-point run for the home side, and the Buckeyes looked destined to win with an eight-point lead with 1:40 remaining.
Then, slowly, the good feelings for players and the crowd alike dwindled.
At first, the downfall came from an unlikely source in guard Macy Brown. The junior has a career season this year, but even then, the guard’s output of 2.1 points in 11.3 minutes per game shows her place in head coach Kim Barnes Arico’s rotation. Brown scored eight of the final 10 points, and those were her only points of the game. If it were not for foul trouble, Brown may have never seen a second of overtime.
However, with guards Mila Holloway and Brooke Quarles Daniels out of the game with five fouls each, Barnes Arico trusted the junior. Brown rewarded her coach’s confidence.
Brown started with two free throws. Then she hit the two biggest consecutive three-point shots of her career. The first was like many Ohio State allowed on Wednesday night, which means they were wide open. Brown received the pass on the left wing, and three Buckeyes stood there as the guard waited a moment and then took her shot. Guard Ava Watson tried to yell to a teammate to close in, so she could stay on guard Syla Swords in the corner. Center Elsa Lemmilä stayed near the free-throw line on her assignment. Point guard Jaloni Cambridge tried to get a hand up, but by the time the sophomore ran towards Brown, the ball was released to cut the Ohio State lead to three points.
With 15 seconds remaining, down three points, Brown’s second deep shot showed that basketball is also a little bit of luck. Brown, this time on the right wing, took a shot that hit off the rim, popped up in the air, and then hit the rim again a couple more times for good measure before going in to tie the game at 86-86. Defensively, Gray closed down on Brown, which made the shot even more impressive considering the atmosphere, implications, and pressure of the moment.
“The impact that she [Brown] made on the game was incredible,” head coach Kim Barnes-Arico told reporters. “Just proud of kids like that. They buy into the process. They come to work every day. They don’t know if they’re going to play. They don’t know what the outcome is going to be at the end of the night, but they’re just unbelievable workers, unbelievable teammates, incredible kids, and tonight, she had an opportunity. Her number was called, and she performed on the biggest stage, just to the best of her ability; she was awesome.”
Tied at 86-86, Ohio State had the ball with the shot clock off. With that came the chance for the game-winning shot, which is a balance. Michigan rested on its defense, and in that moment, most teams are trying their best not to foul the opposition, especially when the Buckeyes were in the bonus. For the Buckeyes, it was the choice between taking a good shot when it presented itself or taking the last possible shot to not give the Wolverines any time to make an impact.
After Ohio got the ball up the court and made a couple passes, freshman guard Bryn Martin chose the good shot route, and the first-year Buckeye had a wide-open attempt from beyond the arc. Michigan closed down the shot late, despite Martin’s 3-for-3 first-quarter shooting from three-point range. The Wolverines played the odds that most shots from deep are not going in, and two players stood beneath the basket, prepared to rebound.
Martin’s shot clanged off the front of the rim, bounced above the outstretched arms of Jaloni Cambridge and into the hands of Swords.
“We would have taken a great shot if we got one early, a great, great, great shot,” McGuff told reporters. “But it’s a real fine line, because we’re good because we play very aggressively and we really attack people. But you know, sometimes it does, doesn’t go your way.”
Then, with 8.5 seconds left on the clock, Michigan guard Olivia Olson did what she did the entire game and pummeled the Buckeyes inside the paint.
In the second quarter, when the Wolverines entered the frame down 14 points, Olson took the team on her back and single-handedly outscored the Buckeyes 15-12 in the quarter on 7-for-10 shooting, mostly inside the paint. Ohio State and Michigan both knew the potential in those closing seconds, and the Wolverines executed their play as well as it went all game against an interior Buckeyes defense that struggled throughout the night.
Even so, it was not coach Barnes Arico or Olson who called the play. It was forward Alyssa Crockett, who played only six minutes, but half of them came in overtime.
“Crockett goes, ‘Just put Liv [Olson] in a ball screen. I could set her a great screen,’ and we did, and Liv scored,” Barnes Arico said.
The Buckeyes had, and made, the final shot of the game, but the clock already expired when Gray’s deep three went through the net. In a game where Ohio State held the momentum and a nearly 1o-point advantage, Michigan rested on players who got them to that point, and a couple of unexpected heroes.
Take a look at the rankings both through the Associated Press and the NCAA’s NET system, and the loss is not the end of the world for the Buckeyes, or the end of a chance to host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. However, it does hurt seeding for next week’s Big Ten Tournament and, maybe more importantly, the morale of a team that had plenty of opportunities to put the game away.
“A game like this hurts, because you pour so much into it and you come up a little bit short, and that’s just college athletics and life in general,” McGuff told reporters. “You try that hard, and something doesn’t go your way. It’s going to hurt. But we got to, like every game, we got to learn where we could have been better, and then get a little bit of rest tomorrow, and then start get prepared for a really good Michigan State team.”
