Like much of March Madness, Saturday’s pair of regional first-round games of NCAA Tournament basketball in Columbus, Ohio, fell in line. No. 3 Ohio State women’s basketball and No. 6 Notre Dame dispatched the No. 14 Howard Bison and No. 11 Fairfield Stags with relative ease. While there were moments of intensity and heightened emotions on the court, both higher seeds won comfortably to set up a blockbuster second round between two top names in college athletics.
For one team, it comes down to how quickly they can adjust and play to their opponent. The other is led by a guard who single-handedly dictates the result of a game.
Adjust or fall
No. 14 seeds entered Saturday winless in the NCAA Tournament. In the first quarter of their game with Ohio State, Howard looked like a team that did not care about any sort of history. The Buckeyes and Bison traded the lead five times in the first eight minutes of the game. It looked like Howard’s speed and athleticism could compete with the smaller but quicker Ohio State.
However, Ohio State adjusted and ultimately came away with a 75-54 win, advancing to the second round. There is an argument to be made for knocking off the rust, but Ohio State showed an ability to adjust and then excel, which is nothing new.
“We tend to not have great first quarters,” center Elsa Lemmilä told reporters. “I think that’s been a common factor this season. But the second quarter was great. You know, we adjusted our press a little bit, and we were able to get a lot of steals.”
Those adjustments meant a comfortable 43-19 halftime lead, but then came the third quarter. Within four minutes, the Buckeyes already put the Bison into the bonus. Overall, the officiating crew called nine fouls against Ohio State in the third quarter, and the sixth one sent head coach Kevin McGuff over the edge.
After forward Kylee Kitts went up to stop a layup from Howard forward Zennia Thomas, the whistle blew again. McGuff yelled and leapt, and within seconds the Buckeye head coach earned a technical foul.
“I didn’t even know he got a tech. I can’t lie,” Jaloni Cambridge told reporters. “I did not know what was going on. Very confused.” Cambridge’s older sister, Kennedy Cambridge, had a slightly different reaction. “I told him, ‘Give him another one,'” Kennedy Cambridge told reporters about her plea to the officiating crew.
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In the halftime locker room, McGuff told the Buckeyes to avoid a second-half lapse. With such a large lead intact, a team is bound to get comfortable. At the time of the third-quarter technical foul, Ohio State had not built on its 24-point halftime lead, still leading by 24. Sometimes a foul like that can energize a team, snapping everyone out of complacency by showing that a coach is battling as much as the players on the court.
However, the technical did no such thing for the Buckeyes’ second half. Howard outscored Ohio State 35-32 in the second half, and while it didn’t do much to change the final outcome, it shows the need for renewed focus from the Buckeyes on Sunday when they face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
On paper, Notre Dame and Ohio State are similar teams that both rely on forcing turnovers and a fast pace to dictate games. Against the Bison, the Buckeyes did not dictate the game as much as they reacted to it. “Today’s a great example of ‘we’re really good when we’re good,'” McGuff said. “For us to continue to advance, we’re going to have to be a much more consistent team.”
Head coach Niele Ivey’s Irish won seven of the last eight games and are playing the best basketball of their season. At the helm is point guard Hannah Hidalgo, who, regardless of how her team is playing, can dictate the results on the court seemingly on her own.
Added to the pressure of that already comes with March is that Ohio State has been in this position for four years in a row now, facing a power conference opponent in the second round, at home. The last two seasons have both ended with the Buckeyes losing on their home court.
Then there is the perceived slight felt by the scarlet and gray. Even though the matchup has the Buckeyes seeded higher and with home-court advantage, some experts saw things differently.
“Whenever [ESPN] told us … what our seed was on national television, they predicted that Notre Dame and Vanderbilt were going to play in the Sweet Sixteen,” Kitts told reporters. “So, I feel like we’re definitely getting overlooked, but we just have to prove who we are.”
Monday gives Ohio State a chance to prove it. Are the Buckeyes a team that can go head-to-head with a similarly built Notre Dame team, or will a momentary lack of focus continue what Kennedy Cambridge called a “curse” of getting out of the second round at home? Maybe McGuff will go for another technical to give his team a needed kick.
“One was enough,” said McGuff, who respectfully disagreed.
Mentoring matchup of mirroring programs
On Monday, when Notre Dame and Ohio State play for a spot in the Sweet 16, it is a reunion between the two teams’s head coaches. Even though it is McGuff’s first time facing Ivey, Notre Dame point guard Ivey is well acquainted with the Ohio State leader.
For all five of Ivey’s seasons playing for legendary head coach Muffet McGraw’s Fighting Irish teams from 1996-97 to 2000-01, McGuff was on the sidelines as an assistant. Ivey took in McGraw’s and McGuff’s coaching and helped lift the program to its first National Championship in 2001.
“He was my coach, but also one of my mentors, and we are very close,” Ivey said. “I’m godmother to one of his daughters. His wife [former Fighting Irish forward Letitia (Bowen) McGuff] is one of my best friends.”
At the time, Notre Dame had a point guard in Ivey who needed a couple of years for her college potential to come to fruition. Once it did, Ivey led the BIG EAST in steals her last two seasons on the way to an AP All-American honor in her graduate season.
Saturday afternoon in Columbus, it was a different kind of point guard performance for junior Hannah Hidalgo, who did not need as much time to adapt to the college game as her coach.
“[Hildago’s] confidence, it’s something that sometimes it takes a while to help players build confidence,” said Ivey. “She’s coming to come to Notre Dame, with that fearlessness and that confidence, she’s got so much swag. She’s a joy to coach.”
Hidalgo’s stat line on Saturday nearly hit a quadruple-double, which would certainly be a joy for any coach to have on their roster. The junior, who won a spot on AP’s All-American Second Team this week following two years on the First Team, played like she was snubbed. Hidalgo scored 23 points with nine rebounds, eight steals and six assists.
For the 33 minutes Hidalgo played in the 79-60 win over Fairfield, the guard pestered and frustrated the MAAC champions. Multiple times in the game, Hidalgo and her Notre Dame teammates got into verbal altercations with a Fairfield team that looked to agitate Notre Dame right back and garner any sort of reprieve from the Fighting Irish’s wire-to-wire victory, but none ever came.
Fairfield shot below its season average of 37% in the loss, finishing with 34.6% efficiency on nine makes from deep, below its Division I-leading 11.4 made three-point shots per game.
“We set a goal before the game started … how many threes you were going to allow them to make? Because it’s not like we were going to hold them to zero threes the whole game,” Hidalgo told reporters. “We were really locked in on kind of shutting them down, running them off the line, and being intentional with making them score with 2 points instead of 3.”
Now the Fighting Irish have a different test ahead of themselves. It is a matchup against a side that nearly mirrors the Irish’s play. Ohio State edges Notre Dame in rebounds, forced turnovers and points per game, but barely. The Buckeyes forced 21.4 per game heading into the NCAA Tournament, while the Irish forced 20.0 per game. They are both second in their respective conferences in pace of play, with 73.5 possessions per 40 minutes for Notre Dame and 76.3 for Ohio State.
In other words, there isn’t much tape study needed, necessarily.
The big matchup will be Hidalgo vs. Ohio State point guard Jaloni Cambridge. Over the summer, the two competed for a spot on Duke head coach Kara Lawson‘s Team USA 2025 AmeriCup roster. That spot ultimately went to Hidalgo.
Like the two teams, both guards play with confidence and pace. While Hidalgo is more active on the defensive end of the court, it is a matchup that is must-watch basketball.
“Jaloni [Cambridge] is an incredible guard, but I think it’s great to grow the game. People want to watch women’s basketball. They want to see the great products on the floor,” Ivey said. “And I think we have two of the best players that will be on the floor Monday.”
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