On March 23, 2026, Ohio State women’s basketball left the court of Jerome Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, with a second-round loss in the NCAA Tournament. A home defeat in March Madness is already a tough pill to swallow, but for the Buckeyes it was even worse. For the third season in a row, the Scarlet and Gray ended its season on its own campus.
The common area outside of the Buckeye locker room was quiet. A visibly upset Chance Gray sat in a reclining chair, and the now-WNBA guard’s teammates sat across from her on the team couch as the media circled, asking questions about the loss and experience of going through it for a third consecutive year. Point guard Jaloni Cambridge sat away from the team, on the ground, tucked into a small back corner of the room.
It’s in those moments that the “athlete” title is stripped away. What is left is a college student who is not only upset but now has to think about the long, six-month offseason. For some, that means graduation; for others it’s the opportunity to see what is available in the transfer portal.
Some teams come out of the other side of the offseason with a whole new look. A revamped roster or maybe even a new coach. For Ohio State, the longtime Big Ten contender returned to the official start of the college basketball preseason practically the same.
With a roster of eight returning players, including four starters, Ohio State knows its weaknesses and enters the 2026-27 season with one focus — make it to the Sweet Sixteen, at a minimum.
In the weight room
After Jaloni Cambridge mourned the end of the season, the now third-year point guard for the Buckeyes went to work, but not in the usual way. The star guard, who grew up in gyms with her dad, NCAA single-season steals leader Desmond Cambridge Sr., focused on herself off the court.
The whole month of May, I lifted more than I touched the basketball,” Cambridge told reporters. “And that also says a lot because I love being in the gym.”
In two seasons in Columbus, Cambridge earned a reputation for going to the rim, sometimes with reckless abandon. At 5’7, that meant a lot of trips to the floor. Year 1 saw Cambridge miss games for taking contact in the paint. The point guard stayed off the injury list in the 25-26 season, but still was no match for the size of competition in the Big Ten.
“We wanted her to be a little stronger to be able to absorb that. And it was such a long season, relying on her for so much that we wanted her to do that, and she kind of embraced it and worked really hard at it,” head coach Kevin McGuff told reporters. “She is a little bit stronger, and so hopefully that’ll help her kind of get through the year a little more unscathed.”
On the court, Cambridge focused on creating more assists and adding a few points to her three-point shooting percentage. Each goes hand-in-hand with staying healthy for the season. After all, even lifting weights won’t completely remove Cambridge’s size disadvantage, but Cambridge feels and looks stronger.
“I got a lot of weight on me now. I can’t even fit into my small clothes anymore,” Cambridge joked.
Cambridge was not alone. Center Elsa Lemmilä was by her side for the added weight work. The 6’6 center led the Big Ten in blocks last season, despite having her offseason shortened by a pair of surgeries, an unfortunate norm for young athletes like Lemmilä who rocketed up to her height.
Lemmilä missed most of summer practice with youth duty in Finland, where her father was born and where Lemmilä spent her high school years. Before that, Lemmilä lifted with Cambridge and even stayed on campus alone with the coaching staff for two weeks to make up for the lost time in team practice.
While on international duty, Lemmilä told Finnish reporters that her focus was to get stronger. Lemmilä is somewhat of a finesse European-style big. Instead of using her size to push to the rim, Lemmilä opted for a lot of turnaround jumpers a few feet away from the basket. This season, Lemmilä will use that newfound strength to take full advantage of her own size advantage over much of the Big Ten.
That will also go far on the boards, an area of weakness for Ohio State over the last five seasons. In that time, the Buckeyes never ranked higher than eighth in the conference in rebounds per game. Three of the five seasons saw the Scarlet and Gray lower than 10th. In 2023-24, the program was 14th out of 14 teams, before UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington joined the conference.
Alongside Lemmilä will be other players who can improve on taking and holding possessions on the boards. Redshirt sophomore forward Kylee Kitts and forwards Ella Hobbs and Seini Henry each return for Ohio State, but one new name who can add to the Buckeyes new strength mindset is freshman forward Adriana Díaz.
Fresh off a U18 European Championship gold medal win with Spain, Díaz made an immediate impact when she joined the Buckeyes in the last month.
“She’s going to be one of the best Buckeyes to ever come out of here,” guard Kennedy Cambridge told reporters. “She came in first day. I literally looked at her and was like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna be great. But also, with her being bigger, she can guard, she can shoot. She’s so strong too.”
“I took a charge on her, and I’ll never do that again,” Jaloni Cambridge added.
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Like most freshmen, Díaz needs time to adjust to the new system at Ohio State. Díaz’s strength and shooting give the Buckeyes options both inside and out. However, under McGuff’s havoc-inducing defensive press, where the team averages 76.3 possessions per game, the second highest in the Big Ten, players have to run, too. Conditioning will be crucial to get time on the court.
“We’ll play her [Díaz] in multiple positions, but she’s still adjusting to kind of what we do and to the pace. That’s completely foreign for her, no pun intended,” McGuff said. “But it’s really different for her. So there’s a lot of things like that that she’s still adjusting to.”
Kennedy Cambridge’s high praise of Díaz, combined with an overall team focus on strength, shows that Ohio State is not resting simply on their baseline-to-baseline speed.
Defensive Player of the Year?
One name on the roster who leads the charge in helping teammates understand McGuff’s system is graduate senior Kennedy Cambridge. Returning to Ohio State was a no-brainer for Cambridge. She credits her teammates, coaches and sister for being key reasons to end Cambridge’s collegiate career with the Buckeyes.
Something that Cambridge has not shied away from are her own personal goals. Last season, it was to be the Big Ten and National Defensive Player of the year. Nationally, the guard made the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award watchlist, but was not one of the four finalists chosen by the committee. Within the Big Ten, Cambridge lost out to UCLA center Lauren Betts for the conference’s best player off the ball.
Even with the disappointment, Cambridge made a strong case for both. Cambridge had a conference-high 130 steals, 11 off the record set by Ashley Deary with the Northwestern Wildcats during the 2015-16 season. That total broke the Buckeye’s program record and made backcourts nervous throughout the conference.
For Cambridge, none of that was enough, and the graduate changed her offseason plans to ensure that 2026-27 is a career-defining campaign.
“I like to travel the world. Unfortunately, I put something before that,” Cambridge said. “So this summer, I literally went from New York back to home, back to New York. So like all month of August, I was playing basketball, working out.”
Cambridge traveled to New York to train with Jerry Powell of Basketball Results, a training organization that works with young kids through professionals. Powell is also the dad of Ohio State assistant coach Jalen Powell. Former Ohio State guard and National Defensive Player of the Year Finalist Celeste Taylor has worked with Powell since she was a middle schooler, so the results of Powell’s training organization are not foreign to Ohio State.
The Buckeye super senior has her eyes not only set on the individual defensive awards, but she wants the steals record too.
It is not all defensive work. During her time with Coach Powell, Cambridge worked on dribbling up the court with her left hand, something she has avoided throughout her career. Also, bringing more impact to the offensive side of the court.
“McGuff has instilled in me, ‘if you see the goal, you shoot it,’” Cambridge said. “And I know last year there was a bunch of times that I’ve hesitated or tried to get other people involved, but me being a senior, a super senior at that, someone’s got to step up. Someone’s got to take the role. Someone’s got to add on. And I’m not helping my team if I’m giving up shots. I’m not helping my team if I’m being lazy and not trying and not confident in myself.”
And the Buckeyes need a scorer, having lost Gray’s 14.7 points per game and team-leading 2.4 made three-point shots per game. Gray was also one of only two people on the team to at least average double-digit points.
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For McGuff
It is no surprise that those three consecutive premature endings brought attention to McGuff’s standing as head coach. Add on an operating a vehicle while intoxicated arrest in the 2025 offseason, which was later reduced to a physical control misdemeanor, and a search across Buckeye fans on social media will usually find a call for the coach’s job.
While none of that came to pass for the 13-year Ohio State head coach, there is pressure on McGuff, especially with the school’s highest-ranked recruit Jaloni Cambridge in her third season in the program. It’s an “if not now, when” question for the Buckeyes.
Those comments looking to replace McGuff all come from outside of the program. Inside, the team is by no means trying to mutiny.
“As a team goal, I want to [win] for our fans, for McGuff,” Kennedy Cambridge said. “He does so much for us, and he’s the chilliest coach I’ve ever had in my entire life. Like love that man, but get him to a Sweet Sixteen. He deserves it as much as we deserve it. He deserves it a lot. He puts a lot into us.”
Most of the time, fans see McGuff via television broadcasts or in the arena. Anyone who has paid attention to the Buckeye leader in-game probably has trouble seeing him as “the chillest coach.” McGuff talks to referees, gets the occasional technical and draws the ire of opposing fans and student sections.
Inside the team is a different story. Sure, there are moments where the team gets constructive criticism in less than friendly tones, but at the level of college basketball played by Ohio State and the Big Ten, there is earned freedom along with the responsibility.
That resonates with some players. After all, Ohio State only lost one player to the portal this offseason, and nobody who played at least 10 minutes per game. Does that mean that every player loves McGuff? Of course not, but there is enough respect and desire to play at the university to return a team with a chance at winning a conference title, and more.
When asked about the team’s desire to win for him, he deflected. With all of the talk about getting out of the home arena in the second round, McGuff first cautioned that they have to play well enough to even earn that right in the first place. When he did have time to talk about what it meant to him, he focused back on the team and the fans.
“It says a lot about them, just that they want that for this program and for this community and for their teammates,” McGuff said. “And so that’s what’s important to me. And I think it just speaks to the fact we have great kids right now. We really do. We have wonderful young women that 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.”
