The good and bad news on the injury front heading into NCAA Tournament week.
At this time of the season, with the NCAA Tournament tipping off this week, there are no teams in the country where every player is 100% healthy. Even if a program has all of their players active and ready to play, it’s impossible to expect that players are not playing through some bumps and bruises following an unrelenting four months of never ending basketball.
For Ohio State women’s basketball, some of the injuries are more evident than others. Against the UCLA Bruins in the Big Ten Tournament semifinal, two important injuries were evident when the Buckeyes’ top two scorers left the game in the third quarter.
Junior forward Cotie McMahon went up for a rebound after halftime and landed hard on the court, injuring her right arm. Soon after, McMahon made it to the free throw line and the forward’s shots could not make it to the basket and McMahon ended the quarter holding her wrist.
Freshman point guard Jaloni Cambridge had a bad ankle sprain when she landed on the foot of UCLA guard Elina Aarnisalo. Cambridge stayed in the game until the whistle blew, but could not put her full weight on the ankle.
McMahon and Cambridge scored 16.6 points and 15.4 points respectively for head coach Kevin McGuff’s Buckeyes, so the idea of missing them puts a team already playing a nine-player rotation in a bit of a pickle. Fortunately for Ohio State and their fans, McGuff gave a positive prognosis Sunday after the NCAA announced the Buckeyes as one of the No. 4 seeds hosting the first two rounds of March Madness.
“They should be fine. They both got kind of a little bit banged up, but I think the week in this past week, not having any games was really helpful,” said McGuff. “So I feel like by the time we play on Friday, they should be good to go.”
Throughout the season, when the Buckeyes needed someone to take over a game, it was usually McMahon or Cambridge. One of the two led Ohio State in scoring in 15 of the Buckeyes’ 20 games against Big Ten opponents, including a 33-point game for Cambridge over the No. 23 Michigan State Spartans and McMahon scoring 18 points in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal against the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Now, McGuff can breathe a sigh of relief, should both players be ready to go on Friday when the Buckeyes open their NCAA Tournament against the Montana State Bobcats.
However, there is one injury not as evident that does not have the same positive bill of health.
Freshman center Elsa Lemmilä came on strong for the Buckeyes in January, increasing her minutes off the bench behind forward Ajae Petty, to the point where the 6-foot-6 Finn might have made it difficult on McGuff to continue leaving her out of the starting lineup. Then, the minutes and effectiveness started to diminish.
After playing focused basketball for 10 appearances, to the point where the freshman had an argument for Big Ten Sixth Player of the Year contention, Lemmilä was not moving the same way. Players were beating the freshman who seemed to have at least one or two key blocks in a game and Lemmilä was trying to catch up to players in the paint.
McGuff had a different prognosis for Lemmilä.
“She’s got a little foot issue going and I don’t know what her availability is going to be this week yet,” said McGuff. “So we’ll see how she does this week and how she’s feeling. We’ll get a little bit later into the week.”
There’s also the matter of another freshman off the bench in shooting guard Ava Watson. The guard out of Georgia won Big Ten Freshman of the Week following a 16-point game where Watson went 4-of-4 from beyond the arc. In that same game, Watson sprained her ankle in the fourth quarter and has not seen a game minute since the injury.
For the good report of McMahon and Cambridge and the bad response for Lemmilä, Watson’s availability sits somewhere in the middle.
“She’s made really good progress,” said McGuff. “We’re not there yet to be able to say for sure, but I think there’s a good chance.”
Ohio State played with a 10-player roster this season, with four players missing every game with a potential redshirt at the end of the campaign. Watson has not played since Feb. 13 and it does not sound promising for Lemmilä. That means an already small pool of players shrinks further at the worst possible time.
That means more time on the court for graduate senior guard Madison Greene and forward Eboni Walker. Playing in their final postseasons as college athletes, McGuff may leverage the pair more, especially Walker who McGuff has kept mostly on the bench this season until the last few games. For Greene, she is already earning more minutes through Watson’s injury and foul issues for Cambridge that plagued the end of her freshman regular season.