The last five games of the season have not been kind to No. 13 Ohio State women’s basketball. After a one-point loss to the Maryland Terrapins, 13-point defeat to the Minnesota Golden Gophers and two-point overtime heartbreaker against the Michigan Wolverines, the Buckeyes finished the season on a high note Sunday in East Lansing, Michigan.
That is where the Scarlet and Gray built a 30-point lead against the Michigan State Spartans in the first half before they settled for an 87-68 victory. Because
of that victory, and a win for the Minnesota Golden Gophers directly after Ohio State’s victory, the Buckeyes enter the annual Big Ten Tournament as the No. 5 seed. Here is the side’s road to any sort of trophy before the NCAA Tournament begins in a little over two weeks.
Ohio State earned a bye into the round of eight teams that begin play on Thursday at noon ET. The Buckeyes play either the No. 12 or No. 13 seed, which are the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Indiana Hoosiers, respectively. Head coach Kevin McGuff’s Buckeyes defeated both of the sides, at home, during the regular season, but when the sides meet on Thursday, they will be different experiences than earlier in the campaign.
For the Hoosiers, head coach Teri Moren’s side lost its first 10 games of the conference season, despite a standout season from senior guard Shay Ciezki. However, a run of games against teams in the bottom half of the standings gave the Hoosiers confidence and have six wins in the last eight matchups of the season. The only losses by the Crimson were from a trip to Los Angeles where they befell a similar result to most teams who travel out to the West Coast in the Big Ten.
When the Hoosiers traveled to Columbus, the Buckeyes went down early to Indiana’s shooting attack but the Buckeyes turned things around to win 81-67.
On Feb. 1, the Buckeyes welcomed the Nebraska Cornhuskers to the Schottenstein Center where a strong defensive effort for Ohio State held guard Britt Prince to only 12 points when the sophomore averaged 18.4 points at that point in the season. Ohio State won that game 90-71.
That loss for head coach Amy Williams’ Cornhuskers began a six-game losing streak that continued until the last two games of the season when Nebraska pulled off an upset in Seattle against the Washington Huskies and ended the season at home in a victory against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
Indiana, who play only one hour south of Indianapolis, the home of the tournament, take on Nebraska in the first game of the five-day tournament on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Should Ohio State move on to the quarterfinals, the road gets substantially more difficult, and littered with teams the Buckeyes lost to in the regular season.
Up first would be the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who jumped Ohio State in the standings on the last day of the season. That 13-point defeat in Minneapolis, Minnesota was the second worst margin of defeat for the Buckeyes in conference play, only behind the 21-point loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes in Iowa City.
If the Scarlet and Gray win, and the higher seed moves on in the first quarterfinal of Friday, it sets up a game against the UCLA Bruins on Saturday. This season, head coach Cori Close’s side has only lost once and that was not in conference play. That undefeated season is the first in the Big Ten since the 14-15 season. Ohio State lost to the Bruins, at home, by seven points. Last season at the Big Ten Tournament though, the Bruins decimated the Buckeyes 75-46.
UCLA’s first game of the tournament is against either the Washington Huskies or USC Trojans, the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds in the tournament field. The Bruins won all three games against the Trojans and Huskies by at least 10 points per victory.
