All of the praise around the play of point guard Jaloni Cambridge and her 41-point performance against the Illinois Fighting Illini is warranted. In front of a personal hero, WNBA star A’ja Wilson, Cambridge had a career-best performance for No. 19 Ohio State women’s basketball in its 78-69 victory.
However, for all of the beauty and finesse of Cambridge’s play, the matchup between two young Big Ten teams poised to challenge near the top of the standings was ugly.
The first half featured a combined
18 turnovers between the two sides, and the Fighting Illini shot 66.7% from the field. There was as little control in maintaining possession as there was interior defense for the Buckeyes, who allowed 30 points in the paint against a smaller in height but not in intensity.
Rebounding-wise, the Buckeyes ended the night with a negative five rebounding margin, but look closer, and Illinois grabbed 12 boards on offense compared to only six for Ohio State. That is six additional possessions for an Illini team that consistently outshot the Buckeyes for the first 20 minutes of the game.
Offensively, Cambridge led the Buckeyes with 41 points because, frankly, Ohio State needed her to. The Buckeye bench contributed zero points on 0-for-6 shooting with a combined two assists and no rebounds. To the credit of the four bench players who made an appearance, they combined for only 29 total minutes, and senior guard T’Yana Todd had 19 of them.
What is most important for Ohio State is that it won. Take away Cambridge’s game and look only at the flaws, and not many would expect that team to win, but head coach Kevin McGuff’s expectations for this team are different from what many Buckeye fans probably want. McGuff does not want anyone to think that Ohio State will blow Big Ten teams out. The 2025-26 edition is going to scrap and battle its way to victories.
“There’s so many good teams, and we’re good, we’ve gotten better, but we’re just not going to overwhelm very many teams,” McGuff said. “I think we’re going to be in a dogfight almost every night.”
This “dogfight” mentality already surfaced in wins over then No. 21 West Virginia, where the Cambridge sisters both fouled out, and a lineup of mostly bench players propelled Ohio State after it was down three possessions late in the game. Or even the loss to the No. 4 UCLA Bruins. Sure, the result did not go the way the Scarlet and Gray wanted, but with 5:44 left in the gam,e the Buckeyes had a 16-point deficit that they cut down to six with less than a minute and a half remaining.
Against the Northwestern Wildcats and Rutgers Scarlet Knights, two sides who are a combined 0-10 in Big Ten play this season, there were chunks of time where an Ohio State win was far from in the bag.
Whether it is a young team still growing together or not “flipping the switch” so to speak to be the team they are capable of being, the results are going their way. There is still time and tougher Big Ten opponents down the road, like Sunday against the No. 8 Maryland Terrapins, but signs are there that Ohio State has a roster up for late-game fights.
Senior guard Chance Gray had another night of important offense with 18 points. Important because many of the shots Gray made either stopped an Illinois scoring run or put the Buckeyes into the lead in a game where the two teams traded the lead 16 times.
“I thought Chance [Gray] played a really good game,” McGuff said. “Jaloni had 41 points, but I would tell you, Chance had some really big shots down the stretch, and she made two big free throws just to kind of keep them at bay. She also had a big jump shot when they were making a run at us, and so I thought her game was really efficient tonight.”
Guard Kennedy Cambridge and center Elsa Lemmilä did not pop off the scoresheet, but their defense and rebounding were critical. Cambridge had two blocks and six rebounds on top of three steals, which kept the guard at No. 2 in the nation with 4.1 steals per game. Lemmilä led the team with eight rebounds and was second only behind Jaloni Cambridge with four assists.
Compared to previous seasons, this “dogfight” attitude is nothing new. Ohio State, even under guards Jacy Sheldon and Taylor Thierry, has always been an all-or-nothing team. In 2023, the Buckeyes famously came back from a 24-point deficit against the Indiana Hoosiers in the semifinal of the Big Ten Tournament. The next day, Ohio State lost by 33 points.
So, while the names on the jersey change, the results on the court will take a similar road. How far the Buckeyes make it down the road depends on the amount of fight they have to give.
