MINNEAPOLIS - It was less than two months ago that Ohio State 's Cotie McMahon made a comment about Maryland 's rebounding that would stick with coach Brenda Frese up until the Big Ten Tournament.
In the first meeting of the season between Ohio State and Maryland on Jan. 17 , the Buckeyes pulled out an 84-76 victory on the road. Contributing nine boards, McMahon helped her team outrebound the Terrapins 42 to 39.
At the start of Ohio State's postgame press conference that night, McMahon was asked what changed in the decisive fourth quarter for the Buckeyes.
"Hustle plays," McMahon said. "After getting beat on the boards so many times in a row, I would be worn out too."
Fast-forward to the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals Friday: No. 8 seed Maryland never looked worn out in its 82-61 upset over No. 1 seed Ohio State .
Remembering what McMahon said about their rebounding, the Terrapins grabbed 55 boards, 12 more than any other opponent has recorded against Ohio State this season. The Buckeyes recorded just 31 rebounds.
"The first game, she challenged us and made it personal about our rebounding," Frese said. "So, I think this team really put a statement together on the glass."
The Terrapins never trailed by more than 15 points in either of their regular-season meetings with the Buckeyes, the second taking place on Feb. 25 at Value City Arena when Ohio State came out on top 79-66 .
"We had just played them a couple weeks ago, and I thought they played really well then too," OSU coach Kevin McGuff said. "We had to play a good game to beat them when we played them, and we didn't play well today. They played a similar game to what they did last time, but we were bad."
Maryland's 24-rebound advantage was the largest deficit Ohio State saw on the glass this season, and the Terps turned their offensive boards into 19 second-chance points. With the Buckeyes scoring just 5 second-chance points, the last thing they needed was to give the Terrapins any more of a shooting edge.
But going 23 for 67 from the field, Ohio State shot 35.7% Friday night, the team's worst offensive performance of the season.
With only Rebeka Mikulasikova (16 points) and Taylor Thierry (13 points) scoring above their season averages among the Buckeyes' starters, the bench, which has been fairly quiet as of late, was unable to pick up any of the slack. Madison Greene was the only reserve to score, hitting one 3-pointer.
"Nobody was very good," McGuff said. "I don't think the starters were good, the bench wasn't good, I wasn't good."
In the previous two matchups, Maryland had solid production from the starting lineup, with a few players putting up good enough numbers to keep the Terrapins in the game but never get them over the hump.
On Friday, outside of Bri McDaniel, every one of Maryland's starting five was able to break down Ohio State's half-court defense and get good looks at the basket.
"In general, one of the things I think we've really hung out hat on this year is our competitive character," McGuff said. "We've not lost a game this year where our competitive character hasn't been where it needed to be, but it wasn't there (against Maryland)."
Maryland's first-team All-Big Ten point guard Shyanne Sellers had been virtually shut down the prior two matchups against Ohio State, shooting a combined 3 for 18 from the field. Finally coming alive in the third meeting with the Buckeyes, the junior hit over 50% of her shots, recording a team-leading 25 points.
When talking to her father, former Ohio State men's standout Brad Sellers, he had one message for her after being limited in minutes the first two times she saw his alma mater this season.
"He told me to stop fouling," Shyanne said after playing a full 40 minutes in the quarterfinal.
Coming into this matchup less than seven days after being handed a loss by Iowa to close out the regular season , Ohio State was able to pinpoint some of the biggest catalysts in what went wrong against the Hawkeyes .
"We weren't good enough with our transition defense or our rebounding," McGuff said following the Iowa loss. "And we had some really costly turnovers that they turned into points."
With those being areas in the game that needed to be cleaned up before entering tournament play, the Buckeyes still allowed Maryland's biggest runs of the game to be generated by turnovers and rebounding. Forcing 15 turnovers, off of which they scored 18 points, the Terrapins were able to capitalize on the opportunities the Buckeyes presented them.
"That and rebounds, we were minus a lot on the boards," said Ohio State's Jacy Sheldon . "We didn't play our best game in that aspect."
Many of the NCAA bracketology updates before the conference tournaments had Ohio State as a No. 1 seed in the tournament. That is likely no longer the case, given the performance of the projected No. 2 seeds in their conference tournaments.
This does not mean, though, that Columbus is out of the running to host NCAA Tournament games in the first and second rounds. As long as Ohio State remains a four-seed or better, which is still a good possibility with the resume the team built over the regular season, Value City Arena will still host at least some postseason basketball.
Nothing will be official however until Sunday, March 17 on "Selection Sunday."
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What went wrong for Ohio State women vs Maryland in Big Ten Tournament
