COLUMBUS — Ohio State’s women’s basketball team walked off the floor in Iowa City last Sunday with an unfamiliar problem at hand: They lost.
The Buckeyes fell 93-83 to Caitlin Clark and the Hawkeyes and snapped their 15-game winning streak. It was a day filled with uncharacteristic turnovers and, as they put it, poor transition defense. The raucous environment, aided by a record-setting afternoon by Clark, didn’t help.
But Ohio State hasn’t had to learn much from its losses, simply because it doesn’t lose much.
The Buckeyes finished the regular season 25-4 overall and 16-2 in the Big Ten. That was good enough for a regular-season conference title and the No. 1 seed in the postseason tournament.
Now, with another experience to draw on in their back pocket, the No. 4 Buckeyes are headed to the conference tournament with dreams of a long March run — and a few games in April, too.
“I honestly don’t think any of us were thinking of that loss,” Celeste Taylor said Thursday during Ohio State’s pre-tournament press conference. “It hurt us that day, we didn’t want to lose, we didn’t come in there to lose. But I think, overall, we’re going to come back today for practice, just focus on the things that we didn’t do well, the things we need to work on. I think we just took that loss as a lesson.”
Those lessons are plentiful for an Ohio State team that is loaded with memories of previous postseason tournaments. And with all that experience, the Buckeyes have made use of it.
Coach Kevin McGuff was named Big Ten Coach of the Year. Jacy Sheldon and Cotie McMahon were named to the All-Big Ten first team. Taylor and Taylor Thierry were named to the second team, and Rebeka Mikulášiková was honorable mention.
“It’s a great reflection of the work that my staff has done and more importantly what the players have done on the court,” McGuff said. “We’ve got great kids and talented players who’ve played really well.”
Oh, and Taylor, a transfer from Duke, was named the 2022-23 ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Meaning, she’s won Defensive Player of the Year awards in back-to-back seasons in two different conferences. A tenacious defender, she’s been a spark to the offensive side of the ball, too.
“It’s really, really special for her and she’s earned it,” McGuff added. “The thing that I’m happy about with her here is that she plays really hard defensively on every possession and she really competes at a high level on that end of the floor, but she’s also got really good instincts just to make plays. And I think as the season’s gone on, as she’s gotten more used to how we play with our full court pressure and our system, it’s just even been better as the year has gone on.”
Taylor, a graduate player for the Buckeyes, is one of four members of the team that averages in double-digits. Sheldon averages 18.2 points, McMahon averages 14.1, Thierry 11.4 and Taylor 10.3. Mikulášiková, the team’s only starter not on that list, is second on the team in assists per game.
Three of the team’s five starters (Taylor, Sheldon, and Mikulášiková) are graduate players, and Thierry is a junior. There is just one underclassman (McMahon) in the starting unit. Even the team’s first player off the bench, Rikki Harris, is a fifth-year senior.
“I think especially when you get to March and win and go home, I think it’s good to have that experience just because you know somewhat of what’s ahead of you, and I don’t want to say the pressure, but the opportunities ahead of you,” Sheldon said. “And I think, geez, pretty much everyone minus maybe the freshmen, the newcomers have been there and we got to experience that last year whether it’s Celeste has been there, Ty has been in that environment too. So I think it helps moving forward, but when it comes down to it, we still got to rely on each other.”
Ohio State is postseason-tested, too.
In the last two seasons, the Buckeyes have made the Elite Eight and Sweet Sixteen. But in the otherwise successful McGuff era, they’ve not reached the Final Four.
“We had a really good fight, but seeing where we didn’t do well last year, applying that to this year, the experience really helps too, calming the nerves a little bit,” Thierry said. “Looking at all the components we have going into the tournament, I think we’re pretty set.”
And this feels like a team, with a bevy of experience, scoring, and defense, that has as good a chance as any.
“Last year we had a great start to the season, went through some adversity in the middle,” Sheldon said. “We kind of had to fight our way back, and this year, we’ve had adversity the first game of the season and then coming down to the last game of the season. So I think it’s good to have that experience under our belt. This year we’ve done a great job of using those losses we have had and growing from them. So I think obviously you want to win every game, but we look at this the most recent losses and kind of a learning opportunity and hopefully we can see them again.”
Now, Ohio State is three wins away from a Big Ten conference title and a surefire No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in a few weeks. And, not to look too far ahead, but the Final Four is in Cleveland.
“We’ve done a lot, we’ve grown a lot since the beginning of the season, but I’ve said it and it might sound crazy, I don’t think, and (McGuff) would probably agree, I don’t think we played our best full 40 minutes yet,” Sheldon said. “And I think that’s encouraging going into March. There’s room to get there and room to continue to grow this team, which is special.”
The possibilities for Ohio State are exciting: A rematch with Iowa in the Big Ten title game remains on the table, as does the team’s first conference championship since 2018. But so does the second-ever Final Four appearance in program history.
That idea is not lost on an Ohio State team that will have a lot of turnover for next season. They have too much experience for it to go unnoticed.
“Not to say they won’t have the talent, but the experience is going to be hard to come by in the following years because of the COVID year that we’ve been given, and the number of years we’ve been able to play college basketball,” Taylor said. “To know that you’re only going to play with this team one time, you won’t be able to play with a group of girls like this ever again in college basketball, to be able to win a Big Ten Tournament championship will be pretty cool.”
