There are 16 different locations for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament, one of them being Columbus, Ohio. Some of them have heavy favorites, while No. 4 rank cities have some close potential Second Round matchups. Ohio State women’s basketball hosts a unique quad of teams that feature two fast sides, looking to overcome regular season hiccups and two mid-majors who schedule tough teams and enter March Madness with higher ranks than some of their conference predecessors.
In it are curses, superpowers, pit bulls and comedic relief.
Ohio State battles a curse
The storyline around Ohio State women’s basketball in the NCAA Tournament over the last few years is — upset. After a run to the Elite Eight in 2023, complete with an upset win over the UConn Huskies in the Sweet Sixteen, the Buckeyes fell in consecutive seasons in Second Round home games. After defeats to the Duke Blue Devils in 2024 and Tennessee Volunteers in 2025, the Scarlet and Gray host for the fourth season in a row with a potential matchup against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish looming. A lot needs to happen for that to come to fruition, beginning with a matchup against the MEAC championship-winning Howard Bison.
“Watching basketball all day [Thursday], there’s plenty examples of people who don’t show up focused and prepared, and things don’t go their way,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters. “So, hopefully we’ve got the right mindset.”
Ohio State enters the tournament off a 10-point defeat to the UCLA Bruins in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals. While it is a result that no team wants, it is only the third time UCLA beat someone by 10 points or fewer this season, and the Buckeyes have two of those results.
McGuff thinks his team responded well to the fall in Indianapolis, but it has been a long two weeks since the Buckeyes stepped on the court for a competitive game. After the loss to UCLA, point guard and Second Team All-American guard Jaloni Cambridge was short for words and visibly frustrated talking about the defeat. It was a completely different version of the guard in her team’s locker room of Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center.
At one point, Ohio State players Kylee Kitts and Elsa Lemmilä grabbed the microphone from the team-run radio broadcast team and chased the Buckeye point guard out of the team lobby, laughing all the way. Cambridge responded with “no comment” as she made her way back to the team’s locker room.
That moment, and Ohio State’s demeanor, headed into the 2026 NCAA Tournament is a stark contrast to last season when the Buckeyes looked disjointed as a team. That gap in morale showed on the court. Cambridge enters this weekend differently and that UCLA loss helped give the guard a final test before March Madness.
“Last year I kind of got down on myself a little bit just because I wasn’t being the best,” Cambridge told reporters. “There was a comment that was made. I’m not gonna tell you who said it, but saying that I wasn’t playing my best game when we played, UCLA, but I told myself that I was doing everything I could. I got my teammates open, whether they missed or made their shots. I was doing everything I could. I was just very proud of myself to stay level headed and not to get too low on myself.”
The Buckeyes hopes lie in keeping that level headedness in Columbus for what will be their last two games of the season, if Ohio State first secures a win over Howard. If they do, what hangs over the season is that second round. Will it end with a trip to Fort Worth, Texas for the Sweet Sixteen or the start of another offseason trying to get over the hump? Redshirt junior guard Kennedy Cambridge put it best for her side when she said that the Buckeyes enter the weekend trying to “break that curse.”
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Howard Bison’s Zennia Thomas finishes college career at home
When forward Zennia Thomas chose a college program, the Cleveland, Ohio area native traveled south to Lexington, Kentucky. The SEC recruit chose the route of a power conference school, but it went the way that often times it does at those programs and Thomas joined the team on the bench. Over two seasons, Thomas made 17 appearances and averaged 7.2 minutes per game. The forward broke into the starting lineup once, and at the end of the season moved into the transfer portal. Even though Thomas did not make a lasting impact in the Bluegrass State on the court, former teammate and current Ohio State guard Kennedy Cambridge described her impact.
“[Thomas’] amazing. She is probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met,” Cambridge told The IX Sports. “
The 6-foot-2 forward took her game and sense of humor to Howard University and the story shifted from a comedy to a sports comeback story. With the Bison, Thomas started 63 of her 66 games headed into Saturday’s NCAA Tournament game against the Buckeyes. In that time, Thomas averaged 27.5 points and made the most of them. This season, the MEAC Player of the Year brought her steel-like focus in the paint to lead the conference with 15.2 points and 8.0 rebounds per game.
Head coach Ty Grace’s side excelled through Thomas, who also brought leadership to the Bison outside of on court ability.
“The biggest thing that I’ve seen with this team is that they show up for one another, obviously having nine new players, and, you know, five freshmen, five returners, and then four of those others are transfer,” Grace told reporters. “You kind of try to figure out who one another is, right. And so they did that. They did a great job of that.”
That cohesion helped the Bison get out from behind MEAC rivals Norfolk State, who earned the conference’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid in each of the last three seasons. Howard entered the 2026 tournament at No. 14, the program’s highest seed. Howard’s road to get there was not easy, with early season defeats to the Purdue Boilermakers, Syracuse Orange and Virginia Cavaliers.
Matchup-wise, the interior duo of Thomas and fellow forward Nile Miller combine for 23.5 points and 15 rebounds per game, which can give the Buckeyes trouble. Ohio State plays with 6-foot-6 center Elsa Lemmilä, but the Bison pair play almost like guards, which will keep Lemmilä on her toes. The other four starters for the home side, all guards, stand at 5-foot-9 or shorter.
Even so, on paper, the Saturday matchup against Ohio State is predicted to go the way as every other 14 vs. 3 matchup in women’s NCAA Tournament history. According to BetMGM, the Buckeyes are 38.5 point favorites. No No. 14 seed has defeated a No. 3 seed in women’s March Madness history but, on Saturday, Thomas and the Bison are not joking around.
“Being able to have the confidence that we need to perform at a high level, and then to come into this type of game and be ready to perform and just showcase that we’re here to compete,” Thomas said. “We’re here to play. We’re not going to lie down for anyone.”
Notre Dame’s Superpower
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish entered the 2026 NCAA Tournament as a No. 6 seed. For most programs in the country, that is a great season, but not for the Fighting Irish. The last time Notre Dame was not a top five seed was 2009. That season, the Irish were one and done with a loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Since then, the side from South Bend, Indiana has not had much adversity in March. The Irish won the 2018 National Championship and have not missed a Sweet Sixteen round since that fateful 2009 season.
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Now, in 2026, Notre Dame enters the tournament away from their friendly confines to play a game that is by no means an easy matchup against the Fairfield Stags. The MAAC side hit 364 shots from three-point range and make 11.4 per game, the highest total in the nation. Not only that, but the Stags are not a team of first-time NCAA competitors just happy to be in the tournament but a side in their third straight March Madness matchup, hungry for the program’s first NCAA Division I postseason victory. It is a game that has the ingredients for an upset, but Notre Dame sees things differently.
Back on Feb. 8, Notre Dame critics received more fuel when the Irish traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia to fall 81-70 to the Virginia Cavaliers for the first time in six years.
“That Virginia game on the road, that hit us hard,” head coach Niele Ivey told reporters. “I think that they they reset, recharge mentally. It was like, we got to get after it. Obviously, that comes from me as well, pushing them and challenging them, but I think something did click.”
Notre Dame went on to win seven of the next eight games. The only loss came in the semifinal of the ACC Tournament where the eventual champions Duke won 65-63, holding off a potential Fighting Irish upset.
Part of that turnaround includes the return of guard KK Bransford from a minutes restriction, giving Notre Dame much needed depth behind three-time All-American Hannah Hidalgo, but it was not only the return of one player. It is the presence of increased defensive focus.
“It’s our superpower right now,” forward Cassandre Prosper told reporters.
In the first 12 games of the 2026 calendar year, the Irish allowed 73.3 points per game with five wins and seven losses. That included an 85-47 defeat to the No. 1 UConn Huskies. In the final eight games headed into the NCAA Tournament, the Irish allowed only 61.1 points and five of those eight came against teams also in the NCAA Tournament bracket, including a 65-62 win over the No. 3 Louisville Cardinals.
“The last several weeks, we have just really grown in all aspects of of our team. Defensively, being just number one, something we focus on daily,” Ivey told reporters. It’s something that they love to do, and so when you have that will to work defensively, that’s what’s carried us this season.”
Before the Saturday matchup, it is three-point defending all over the scout against Fairfield. There are three Stags who hit over two shots from deep per game. Forward Meghan Anderson alone makes 2.9 of Fairfield’s 11.4 per game at a 41% clip. With Fairfield’s five-out offensive system, where all players start plays from beyond the arc, Notre Dame’s super hero defensive focus may need the be as fast as a speeding bullet to keep up with the passing to find the open player.
Fairfield’s Pit Bull
The Fairfield Stags are something of an anomaly in college basketball. Not simply in the way they play with a bevy of three-point shooting and fun positions like head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis’ “road runners,” but that players go to Fairfield and they do not want to leave. Normally, a player that excels at a mid-major like Fairfield, who is playing in their third straight NCAA Tournament and fourth March Madness in five years, has plenty of options if they go into the transfer portal, but not the Stags.
Take guard Janelle Brown. The 2023-24 MAAC Player of the Year led the Stags in Fairfield’s first trip to March Madness under Thibault-Dudonis. The guard shot 57.2% from the field in that campaign and scored 13.8 points per game. She’s a player who most coaches would love, but Brown stuck around. Though she tore her ACL the next season, Brown came back again for a sixth season with the Stags. Part of that return was to get Fairfield to its first NCAA Tournament win in eight tries.
“We say Fairfield is not just for four years. [Brown’s] is six, but it’s not just four years, it’s 40 plus,” Thibault-Dudonis told reporters. “She’ll forever be a part of the Fairfield family, and I know she’s ready to go make some history.”
Brown is not alone. Fairfield’s top three scorers are all career Stags. One of the road runners is Meghan Andersen, a 6-foot-1 junior who scores 16 points per game, plays inside like a big but is also expected to run the floor and contribute with steals, pinpoint passing and deep shooting. Leading them is junior guard Kaety L’Amoreaux, the 25-26 MAAC Player of the Year and member of the MAAC All-Defensive Team.
“You got a pit bull right here that just is relentless on both sides of the floor,” Brown told reporters, pointing at L’Amoreaux sitting right next to the sixth year senior.
L’Amoreaux is a key to Fairfield’s success. The guard leads the team, and MAAC, with 17.6 points per game and tops the Stags with 4.4 assists and 2.1 steals per game. When Thibault-Dudonis talks about her team playing on both sides of the ball, L’Amoreaux is the visual representation of Fairfield basketball.
In the Stags tough nonconference schedule, L’Amoreaux scored 31 points with six steals and three assists against fellow NCAA Tournament side Richmond. The guard nearly had a triple-double against the USF Bulls with 28 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists.
If Fairfield moves on to the Second Round for the first time in program history, it will be partly due to the play of L’Amoreaux.
“[L’Amoreaux’s] grown the most in being a scoring point guard, which is a very tall task for anybody to be able to discern, ‘when does my team need me to score, and when does my team need me to distribute and create great shots for everybody else with great scores around her,’” Thibault-Dudonis said. “She has been kind of the head of the monster for us all year long, and I’m really proud of her growth.”
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