How the Buckeyes responded to pressure in the regular season tells a story heading into March Madness.
In one day, Ohio State women’s basketball returns to the NCAA Tournament for the 29th time in program history. There is the usual excitement for March Madness, but the focus surrounding the program is how will the team respond from a horrible display against the UCLA Bruins in the last game of the Buckeyes’ last game of the Big Ten Tournament.
For clues, take a look at the road that the Scarlet and Gray traveled to Friday’s NCAA Tournament tip.
There is no denying that the Ohio State loss to the UCLA Bruins was the worst loss of the season. The Buckeyes lost by 29 points and that was only because the Scarlet and Gray went on a 10-point run to end the game. At the end of the third quarter, UCLA built a 37-point lead, a program-record deficit for the Buckeyes after 30 minutes.
Even if no loss so far this season has touched that level of difficulty in Ohio State’s game, there have been other games this season where the Buckeyes went into games and either walked out with a loss or won by the skin of their teeth.
Look at the third game of the season against the Belmont Bruins where the Buckeyes took a three-point deficit into the fourth quarter that extended to eight points before freshman point guard Jaloni Cambridge saved the day in the final minute.
Then there was the first loss of the season for the Buckeyes when the Penn State Nittany Lions shocked Ohio State in State College with a 62-59 upset victory. That was Penn State’s only Big Ten win in 18 games.
After each game, the Buckeyes responded with a victory. Now, the near loss to Belmont had more mid-major non-conference games follow it, but Ohio State did not let up on teams, winning 14 games in a row by an average margin of 26.9 points per game. That included a neutral site game against the Stanford Cardinal where the Buckeyes won by 25 points.
Following the loss to Penn State, Ohio State regrouped and beat three tournament teams in a row against Maryland, Nebraska, and Washington.
So, the Buckeyes are a team that can be great but a lot of it comes after the team gets startled.
“We’re kind of in a similar place we’ve been most of the year in that our good is really good,” OSU head coach Kevin McGuff said. “We just have been an inconsistent team.”
That inconsistency led to a stretch of three losses in five games, with each loss coming to tournament teams like the pair of Big Ten No. 1 ranked teams from Los Angeles with the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans.
Ohio State responded, winning the next three games after an upset defeat to the Indiana Hoosiers, in Bloomington. Those wins earned the Buckeyes a guaranteed No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Buckeyes lost to Maryland, in overtime, to end the season but recovered in the Big Ten Tournament against Iowa.
When the Buckeyes are feeling up for a game, the result against the Hawkeyes happens. It was a knockdown, drag-out, defensive battle but Ohio State was ready for the challenge, unlike the next night against the Bruins in the semifinal.
Following the loss, the Scarlet and Gray quickly packed up and headed home. There were no player-only meetings or motivational speeches between teammates. The players put their frustrations into practice.
“We just all just try to look at ourselves and what we could have done better,” guard Chance Gray said. “I think most of that issue was just how hard we were playing and the mentality that we came out with and carried it into practice. We had a really good couple of days of practice and I think we always try to do a better job of not dwelling on the loss, but moving on.”
Aside from playing the toughest road trip in the country, playing two top-four teams in Los Angeles in the span of four days, Ohio State has not dwelled on losses and turned them into extra motivation for the next game.
It’s a helpful quality in the regular season but how does that work in the NCAA Tournament? The Buckeyes also did the opposite where they had lulls following emotionally charged games. Both games against Iowa, each featuring games that went down to the wire, turned into losses.
After losing to UCLA in the regular season, a game where the Buckeyes put in the work for three quarters to tie the game in the first minute of the fourth quarter, the lull hit in the final nine minutes and carried into a one-sided game against the USC Trojans.
In March Madness, teams cannot pick and choose who they decide to play at full intensity. A potential win for top seeds in Columbus on Friday means the Buckeyes take on the Tennessee Volunteers of the SEC. Survive that game and it’s a potential matchup in the Sweet Sixteen against the No. 1 Texas Longhorns.
The road to a national title is not easy, but that’s how the tournament is designed — the best teams aiming to become the best in the country. Does Ohio State have enough fight to be in the conversation in the second and third weekends of the tournament?
There is one thing for sure, the Buckeyes have yet to peak this season and for any program success in this year’s tournament, now is the best time to start the ascent.