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'We had no fight': No. 12 OSU faces No. 8 Maryland following first loss vs Penn State
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- 'We had no fight': No. 12 OSU faces No. 8 Maryland following first loss vs Penn State
No. 12 Ohio State will face No. 8 Maryland Thursday looking to rebound from a 62-59 loss to Penn State Sunday that snapped the Buckeyes' 17-0 start .
Sunday's defeat was OSU's lowest-scoring outing since an 82-61 loss to Maryland in the 2024 Big Ten tournament quarterfinals.
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"We had no fight, we had no grit," Ohio State junior Cotie McMahon said. "We had stretches of it, but those are some things that you can't have stretches of, you got to have the full 40 minutes."
Ohio State's Cotie McMahon and her teammates will host Maryland on Thursday.
Status of Jaloni Cambridge vs. Maryland
Ohio State was without starting point guard Jaloni Cambridge , who averages 15.4 points a game, due to an illness. Coach Kevin McGuff confirmed that the freshman was sick but provided no timeline for her return, making her status against Maryland questionable.
Cambridge's absence was noticeable, as her replacement in the starting lineup Madison Greene scored just 3 points, but Ohio State was already struggling to complete games with Cambridge on the court.
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After the Buckeyes' 69-60 win over Oregon earlier this month, McGuff claimed that Ohio State was falling into the habit of playing two strong quarters and two "awful" ones.
"It's all about fight," Ohio State junior Chance Gray said. "We just need to have a better mentality ... go a lot harder than what we're doing. He (McGuff) said we were kind of flirting with the game like this, and it happened, and it kind of bit us in the butt."
Chance Gray and the Ohio State Buckeyes face Maryland in a Thursday night game at Value City Arena.
Rebounding continues to be Ohio State's biggest challenge
The Buckeyes shot 40.7% from the field against Penn State, well below their season average of 46.5%, but rebounding played a bigger role in the loss.
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"Our defense wasn't good enough, and it probably as much as anything, the rebounding," McGuff said. "We didn't rebound, we didn't defend well enough and we had chances down the stretch to make winning plays, whether it be grab a loose ball, get a rebound, make a layup, and we didn't make it."
Ohio State grabbed 21 rebounds, with graduate forward Ajae Petty leading the team with seven, compared to Penn State's 39. This allowed the Nittany Lions to record 12 second-chance points to the Buckeyes' 4.
"If I’m being completely honest, we still are struggling a bit on the boards," said Ohio State's Cotie McMahon.
The four players who remain at Ohio State from last season recall how a lack of rebounding led to their elimination at the hands of Maryland in the Big Ten Tournament. The Terrapins outrebounded the Buckeyes that game 55-31.
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While the Buckeyes keyed in on rebounding during this offseason and added 6-foot-3 Petty from Kentucky for help on the boards, Ohio State still has concerns.
"If I'm being completely honest, we still are struggling a bit on the boards," McMahon said. "It's just a matter of if we, as a team, decide that this is what we need to do, and we need to do it."
Maryland is the first of three top-10 ranked teams Ohio State will face in the next five games, with road matchups against No. 1 UCLA and No. 4 Southern California looming in early February.
Taylor Thierry (2) and the Ohio State Buckeyes are 17-1 on the season.
The Buckeyes' toughest stretch of the season starts four days after their first loss, forcing Ohio State to move on quickly.
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"We don't have a choice, we can't dwell on the game," Gray said. "We got to move on, and that starts in practice. So, we just got to get going and have a mentality coming every day and just work as hard as we can."
Ohio State tips off against Maryland at 6 p.m. Thursday at Value City Arena. It is the first of two regular-season matchups between the two teams.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State women's basketball vs Maryland follows Penn State loss
