Ohio State had its women’s basketball season come to an end on its home court for a third consecutive year, falling to No. 6 seed Notre Dame 83-73 as the No. 3 seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Buckeyes point guard Jaloni Cambridge matched her career-high 41 point, but also committed seven turnovers. Hannah Hidalgo, the Fighting Irish’s point guard, finished with 26 points, 13 rebounds and eight steals.
The elimination makes Ohio State the first team to lose three consecutive games at home in the tournament since the NCAA switched to giving the top four seeds hosting rights in 2015.
Here are three takeaways from the Buckeyes’ elimination:
Ohio State’s biggest downfall was turnovers
The Buckeyes managed to score the same number of points off turnovers as Notre Dame (25), though committing 21 turnovers stunted the offense. The Fighting Irish had just 15.
“It was turnovers,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said. “We got killed, and usually we win the points off turnovers. … We had too many live-ball turnovers. Notre Dame just really made us pay. They got a lot of easy baskets in transition because of that, and we just couldn’t overcome it.”
The fact that Notre Dame had a slightly worse game from the field, shooting 43.5% compared to Ohio State’s 46.2%, was negated by the Buckeyes taking 10 fewer shots (62-52).
Seven minutes into the fourth quarter, the Buckeyes had more turnovers − seven − than shots, getting off only three before ending the game on an 8-0 run in the final 40 seconds.
Jaloni Cambridge produced more than half of Ohio State’s offense
Despite Cambridge wanting to have done more for Ohio State in the last game of her sophomore season, she received little help from any of her teammates.
No other Buckeye scored in the double digits. Cambridge accounted for 56.2% of Ohio State’s offense. Five of the team’s seven made 3-pointers came from her.
While Notre Dame had 13 bench points, Ohio State had just two.
Center Elsa Lemmila started the game strong, notching five rebounds and two blocks through the first quarter before her play became panicked. Lemmila finished with 9 points, 10 rebounds − all on the defensive end − and she never put down another block.
In the final game of her college career, guard Chance Gray had 9 points.
The press was never effective for Ohio State vs Notre Dame
There were stretches in which Ohio State’s half-court defense was solid and forced Notre Dame into bad shots, but the Fighting Irish grabbed 11 offensive rebounds for 13 second-chance points.
Ohio State recorded five second-chance points on six offensive boards and were outrebounded 36-31.
The bigger issue was that the Buckeyes’ press never reached full effectiveness, as the entire lineup had the same number of steals (eight) as Hidalgo had. Without the press working, the Buckeyes scored only 10 fast-break points, when their average is 16.3.
The Buckeyes finish the 2025-26 season with a record of 27-8.
bmackay@dispatch.com
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Turnovers hurt Ohio State in NCAA Tournament loss to Notre Dame: Takeaways
Reporting by Brianna Mac Kay, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
