INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Then there were four in the Big Ten Tournament. Saturday cut the number of games in half, but those matchups pit a team of speed against size in one, and a growing rivalry of two young teams near the top of the Big Ten standings in the other.
Here is how an experienced guard outplayed a rising national star and an injured Hawkeye who picked up her team and led them to victory.
Different days for Kiki Rice & Jaloni Cambridge
In the first game of the day, the No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins faced the No. 5 Ohio State Buckeyes. Like everyone else in the conference, the Buckeyes lost to the Bruins in the regular season, but in 11 games of the regular season campaign, the seven-point win for UCLA was the smallest margin of victory until the Bruins played the Michigan Wolverines on Feb. 8.
A lot has changed for the Buckeyes since that Dec. 28 matchup. Ohio State grew in experience and solidified itself as a top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament. Much of that came from the work of point guard Jaloni Cambridge. The sophomore led the Big Ten with 26.4 points per game in conference play and is part of the reason why UCLA Center Lauren Betts was not the unanimous Big Ten Player of the Year.
On Saturday, guard Kiki Rice was the star of the show over both Betts and Cambridge in the 72-62 victory for the Bruins.
Rice gets overshadowed by all of the attention on the 6-foot-7 Betts, but on Saturday, Ohio State sophomore center Elsa Lemmilä held the big to less than her season averages with 14 points and nine rebounds. A defensive performance that made Betts take more midrange efforts and showed a promising future for the Finnish Buckeye.
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With Ohio State’s attention on Betts, Rice had more room to play, and the guard does not need much. Rice led the Bruins with 17 points and added eight rebounds, behind only Betts. It is not only the number, but the moments in which the numbers were created.
The Buckeyes went into halftime down 11 points, but the defensive adjustments made in the halftime locker room had Ohio State come out as the aggressors. UCLA had to weather the storm and Rice played a pivotal role in the fourth quarter.
Ohio State shrunk the double-digit deficit down to single digits four times in the final 10 minutes and each time, Rice was the reason it got back up to 10 or more. The first was a three-point shot that stopped a four-point Ohio State run. The next time was an assist to Angela Dugalic after Rice made a run to the basket, pulled in the defense and found the Big Ten Sixth Player of the Year open on the wing.
The third from two free throws after Rice went to the basket. In such a tightly contested second half, that the Buckeyes actually won 41-40, UCLA had to limit mistakes and Rice helped with not a single turnover in the entire game.
“In those moments where they went on a run or seems like a key possession, we just have a ton of confidence in each other to make the right play, to knock down the shot, to get the look we want to get. I do think it’s about figuring out who do we want to get the shot to, what do we want to force,” Rice told reporters.
While Betts earns the accolades, and Rice is not immune from an award or two with spots on the All-Big Ten First Team and All-Defensive Team, Rice is the foundation and it showed Saturday.
From the start of Saturday’s first semifinal, Cambridge had a different kind of afternoon. The guard started with a blocked midrange shot from Betts, and it foreshadowed the worst performance of the sophomore’s Big Ten season. Cambridge scored a personal Big Ten season low 12 points.
Cambridge’s performance showed a young leader who tried to will her team to an upset victory. The guard went 4-for-14 and missed both attempts she tried from beyond the arc. Also, four of the points she scored came from the free throw line, where Cambridge often visits, thanks to her aggressive moves to the basket.
Those runs still happened on Saturday, but the UCLA defense was prepared. In the final 51 seconds of the defeat, when Ohio State got the deficit down to seven points, the guard missed two layups and a 3-pointer at the end of regulation that would not have impacted the result of the game.
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Overall, Cambridge had a quieter tournament performance. Ohio State’s star averaged 16 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.3 assists. While her assists were up .8 from the Big Ten season average, the 10-point dip was part of the difference on Saturday. It was a better performance than last year’s Big Ten Tournament, alongside now Mississippi forward Cotie McMahon, but as the top offensive threat for Ohio State, the Buckeyes needed more to overcome the No. 2-ranked team in the nation.
It was a performance that may turn into a learning experience. Nothing about the tournament, though, will change what she means to Ohio State.
“[Cambridge] takes a lot of pride in her game and how she impacts the team,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters. “I love the ball in her hands and the plays that she makes. I don’t think she took a lot of bad shots today at all. I think she took good shots and they normally go in. And if we continue to get her those type of shots, I think we’re going to be in good shape.”
Stuelke fuels victory over Wolverines
Before the Big Ten Tournament, the status of No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes forward Hannah Stuelke was in question. The senior from Iowa missed two of the last four games due to an elbow injury. Stuelke missed games against teams near the bottom of the Big Ten standings in the Purdue Boilermakers and Wisconsin Badgers, so on the surface, it was a calculated risk to get the forward healthier for the looming postseason.
The Hawkeyes won both games she was out, but in the tournament, especially across the final three days, there are not many flukes or one-sided matchups. Against the No. 3 Michigan Wolverines on Saturday, the Hawkeyes needed Stuelke and she delivered a dominating performance in the final 12 minutes of Iowa’s 59-42 victory to push her side into the Big Ten Tournament title game.
Saturday’s last semifinal had one of those misleading score lines where the large gap between the sides was not truly how the game played out. With 6:08 left in the third quarter, Michigan earned its first lead of the game. From the jump, the Hawkeyes played physical basketball and disrupted the Michigan offense in front of a strong pro-Iowa-fueled crowd.
Iowa held the Wolverines to four points in the opening quarter with guard Olivia Olson on both baskets. The rest of the sophomore starting guard trio, Syla Swords and Mila Holloway, went a combined 0-for-7.
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“We really started out with defensive tenacity again,” head coach Jan Jensen told reporters. “So many people asked me, when we beat them at home, they said, ‘what was the secret or what was the — you know, what did you do? I just said we really tried to make it hard, really tried to guard. I knew that we had to do that same thing.”
That intensity waned in the second quarter, and Michigan trimmed away at the deficit, but it was not until the third quarter that the Wolverines put the Hawkeyes on their back heels. A 12-5 Michigan run flipped the once 11-point first-quarter lead into a one-point advantage for the Maize and Blue. It felt like a turn of the tide. Enter Stuelke.
Iowa’s next nine points from the end of the third quarter into the fourth came from the injured Stuelke. The forward shot 4-for-5 in that solo run of scoring, which gave her team plenty of time to get back to the defensive focus needed to take back control of the game.
“[Stuelke’s] really leaned into her leadership role, for her to put that team on her back in the fourth quarter,” Jensen said. “That’s just a senior willing it to happen because she was sick, and that elbow still doesn’t feel great.”
The Hawkeyes picked up the scoring from there for the forward, and a 10-point run put the Wolverines in the rearview mirror. Anytime Michigan scored in the last three minutes, Stuelke was there to erase it, injury and all.
“There’s just a wall. You’ve got to push through it, get to the next play, and do anything I can just for my teammates,” Stuelke said. The next wall up includes 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts and the UCLA Bruins.