The Buckeye picks up her second honor of the week following a standout week in the Big Ten
A day after winning the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Week honor for the third time, freshman point guard picked up a new award for the first time. On Tuesday, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association announced their weekly award winners, with Cambridge earning their National Freshman of the Week honor.
Cambridge had a big start to her NCAA career, scoring 29 points in her debut game but since then ran into injury issues, literally. With multiple collisions forcing the freshman to miss games and parts of games, Cambridge is now finding her sweet spot, which was evident last week.
In three games, Cambridge averaged 22.3 points, 3.7 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 3.0 steals. In two games, the freshman led the team in scoring and nearly did too in the third game if not for sitting on the bench most of the fourth quarter with an insurmountable lead against the Purdue Boilermakers.
It began against the Iowa Hawkeyes when Cambridge scored a personal conference best 29 points, plus late free throws in overtime to cement the win over the Buckeyes’ rivals. On Thursday, Ohio State traveled to Bloomington and lost to the Indiana Hoosiers by 10, but it wasn’t because of Cambridge’s play.
The freshman tried to push the Buckeyes to an important away victory but a disjointed performance by the visitors couldn’t be overcome. Cambridge still scored 18 points to lead Ohio State, along with other team highs with four rebounds and four steals.
Ohio State’s dynamic freshman has adjusted her game to the size and physicality of opponents in NCAA basketball. While Cambridge still goes to the basket with incredible speed, the freshman is more selective and either finds open teammates or pulls up for midrange jumpers if a larger defender is too much to get around. That’s led Cambridge to a team high 90 assists, and is 11th in the conference with 3.9 assists per game.
Cambridge is second on the team in scoring with 15.6 points per game and elevated her game in Big Ten play, increasing it to 16.1 points per game. In conference play, Cambridge also averages 4.9 rebounds. 3.6 assists and 2.0 steals per game.
This isn’t the first USBWA freshman award in the program. In 2015, guard Kelsey Mitchell won Ohio State’s only USBWA Freshman of the Year award after winning Freshman of the Week twice during the regular season.
Last season, forward Cotie McMahon also earned a spot on the USBWA’s All-American list as an honorable mention while the group of basketball media members named former Buckeye guard Jacy Sheldon as a Third Team All-American.
On Feb. 3, both Cambridge and McMahon were named to the USBWA’s Ann Meyers-Drysdale National Player of the Year award watch list, two of only 50 players in the country named to the list.
Cambridge is living up to the No. 1 overall point guard ranking in ESPN’s Hoopgurlz top 100 prospects in the country.