Traveling to Los Angeles, California to play two top teams in the nation is no easy task, which Ohio State women’s basketball learned firsthand last week. The Buckeyes returned home to Columbus following two games where the Scarlet and Gray didn’t only fall, but fall hard.
After double-digit defeats to the No. 1 UCLA Bruins and No. 7 USC Trojans, the Buckeyes play four of their last six games regular season games at home, but it can’t be the same side returning home. These two defeats showed that there is a sizable gap between the two top teams in the Big Ten and Ohio State.
Against the Bruins on Wednesday, things went ok for Ohio State for three of four quarters. Defensively, UCLA had trouble scoring on the Buckeyes but offensively the Scarlet and Gray struggled. Shots were there for the taking but didn’t fall with any sort of regularity.
Saturday night was a different story with USC’s defense. The Trojans played strong man coverage and with the home side’s size and defensive pressure, the Buckeyes didn’t have nearly the same number of open looks as they did further north against the Bruins.
Ohio State went into the game hoping to be multidimensional on offense. Teams expect the Buckeyes to attack the basket with forward Cotie McMahon and guard Jaloni Cambridge, but instead, it was forward Ajae Petty starting the game strong under the basket. Petty received passes and took on USC defenders one-on-one, scoring eight first-half points.
“When we played Wednesday night, we took a lot of jump shots and a lot of drives we didn’t get a lot of post-ups,” said head coach Kevin McGuff. “It’s hard because Betts is so big and protects the rim and so we just wanted to challenge them around the basket a little bit just to see you know if we could get some some easy shots just because we really hadn’t gotten a lot here recently.”
