Ohio State Women’s Basketball: Simple Goal (Or Is It?) As Practice Starts

Press Pros begins our coverage of Ohio State women’s basketball with a look at their overarching goal for this season, where the program has been and where it hopes to be going.

Columbus, OH – Lest there be any debate, Kennedy Cambridge got one thing out of the way on the first day of practice for the Ohio State women’s basketball team. 

Another early exit from the NCAA Tournament is not acceptable. 

“We have a goal this year just to make it out of the Schott and to make it to the third round, and I don’t wanna do that with anybody else,” the Ohio State fifth-year guard said in response to a question about her decision to return to college for one more year. 

They want that not only for themselves but also the fans and head coach Kevin McGuff. 

“He does so much for us, and he’s like the chillest coach I’ve ever had in my entire life. I love that man,” Cambridge continued. “But, like, get him to the Sweet 16. He deserves it. As much as we deserve it, he deserves it a lot. He puts a lot into us.” 

Make It Out of The Schott might sound like a low-budget knockoff of a classic summer action film, but the origin of the phrase has no mystery. 

After a surprise run to the Elite Eight in 2023, Ohio State has lost in the round of 32 three straight seasons. Adding insult to injury, all three defeats took place on their home floor to lower-seeded teams. Seventh-seeded Duke sent the Buckeyes home early in 2024, 5-seed Tennessee repeated the feat in ’25, and 6-seed Notre Dame upset them last spring. 

Then again, is winning two tournament games really a fair expectation? 

Hasn’t this program grown beyond that? 

Given that ’23 triumph, it’s an interesting question for anyone who has followed the Ohio State women’s basketball team for more than a few years. 

That happens to be the case for me as I was a full-timer on the beat from the early days of Jim Foster’s tenure and into the beginning of McGuff’s reign, which is entering year 14. 

Foster won six Big Ten championships from 2003-13. He re-established a winning tradition that dates back to the 1980s when the NCAA first began holding a women’s tournament and the Big Ten started sponsoring the sport. 

Foster also had well-documented issues in March. His Buckeyes made three Sweet 16s, but eight times they lost to a team with a worse seed. 

The reasons varied from straight upsets to bad matchups to teams that just weren’t any better than the top 16 teams in the country simply playing to their level. 

After the Buckeyes missed the 2013 tournament, then-director of athletics Gene Smith made the decision to fire the program’s winningest coach and eventually landed on McGuff as his successor. 

Smith said in no uncertain terms he expected McGuff to take the program to another level, but it’s hard to say that has happened. (Which is not to say Foster would have been able to maintain the level he’d established if left in place.) 

McGuff’s teams have won the Big Ten regular season crown four times and been to four Sweet 16s. 

That Elite Eight run, complete with a dominant win over Connecticut in the program’s second-ever Sweet 16 victory, is the obvious high point, but does that make McGuff’s tenure a success? 

Well, it’s not over yet, so we don’t have to give a definitive answer, but this feels like a pivotal year. 

The Buckeyes defied expectations — on the positive side — last season by winning 27 games and finishing tied for fourth place in the Big Ten with a 13-5 conference mark. 

They return six of their top seven scorers and might feature only one player who is not at least a junior. 

Pointing out the Big Ten that Foster dominated was nowhere near as difficult to navigate as the league is now is also necessary. For one thing, that version of the league did not contain Maryland or UCLA, the defending national champion. For another, Michigan and Indiana are good now but were generally terrible then, though it could be said each of those teams has replaced its in-state rival as formidable foes. 

Iowa? The Hawkeyes were good before Caitlin Clark, elite with her, and still are good without her. 

This season, eight or nine teams (including Ohio State) are projected to be in the top 25, so there seems no debate the league is not getting any shallower. 

So where do these Buckeyes fit in? 

Time will tell, but they are set up for an intriguing season. 

All-American guard Jaloni Cambridge returns at point guard with her older sister returning on one of the wings. Kennedy has made her name as a defensive stopper but says she spent the summer working on her left hand and will be looking for her shot more this season. 

That’s important because the biggest loss was three-point ace Chance Gray, who was a second-round pick in the WNBA draft after averaging 14.7 points per game and shooting 40.5% from 3-point range. 

McGuff said he looks for junior Ava Watson and sophomore wing Bryn Martin to help fill that void while juniors Kylee Kitts and Elsa Lemmila return in the front court, where both flashed star potential at times last season. 

Like most of McGuff’s teams, the ’25-26 Buckeyes could put the ball in the basket and turn over the other team via what’s become their signature press, but they also had their limitations — chiefly rebounding and half-court defense. 

Another year in the weight room should help Kitts and Lemmila in those departments, but there is also excitement in the program about the additions of power forwards Adriana Diaz, a standout in Spain, and Sydney Mobley, a highly-regarded prospect from Big Walnut High School in Columbus. Mobley was supposed to be a senior in high school right now but opted to graduate a year early. 

As for Kennedy Cambridge’s stated goal, McGuff neither totally affirmed nor denied it on day one. 

“Hopefully we play well enough to get a chance to play here,” he said, taking nothing for granted at this point. “It’s always a great opportunity to be able to play in front of your fans in the NCAA Tournament, so hopefully we’ll have a team that can play well enough to move on. I think it says a lot about them that they want that for this program and their community and for their teammates, so that’s what’s most important to me. It just speaks to the point we have great kids in the program. These are wonderful young women we have an opportunity to coach, and for me I just hope that I can help them reach their potential and do something special this year.” 

I don’t think he was trying to affirm or fight any narratives with that answer. That’s just how coaches think when there are presses to perfect and inbound plays to install prior to the first exhibition game. 

The madness of March will be here soon enough, and you can look forward to Press Pros chronicling every step.