The Buckeyes head to Hartford to face the defending NCAA National Champions.
The 2025-26 Ohio State women’s basketball schedule is slowly coming together, and now the Buckeyes have added the top team in the nation to their non-conference slate. On Nov. 16, 2025, Ohio State heads to Hartford to take on the defending national championship-winning UConn Huskies, the Huskies announced on Friday.
For the first time since 2023, the two teams face off, with far fewer implications involved than in the last meeting. In the Sweet Sixteen on March 25, 2023. The Buckeyes defeated the Huskies 73-61 in a matchup that did not feature Paige Bueckers, who missed all of the 22-23 season due to injury.
This time around, Ohio State still will not face Bueckers, who left UConn for the WNBA in the offseason, but Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma still has guard Azzi Fudd and a strong roster from top to bottom.
Fudd leads the side after she suffered through injuries for most of her college career, including 2023 when she returned from injury for March Madness. Fudd bounced back in the 2024-25 season and averaged 13.6 points and 1.8 assists, but will feature more prominently this year without Bueckers at the helm.
The Huskies also feature sophomore forward Sarah Strong, who was a force in her first season at UConn. Strong won a spot on all three All-American teams: the Associated Press, basketball coaches, and basketball writers. The forward was unfazed by the move to the collegiate ranks and averaged 16.4 points, 8.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 2.3 steals per game.
This summer, Auriemma made the squad stronger when he added two former Big Ten players that the Buckeyes know well. UConn added former All-Big Ten standout forward Serah Williams from the Wisconsin Badgers program, and Kayleigh Heckel left the USC Trojans after her freshman season to join the defending champions.
Ohio State has a 1-6 record against the Huskies and lost all five regular-season games against them. Head coach Kevin McGuff led the Buckeyes in six of the seven matchups against UConn all-time, and the Sweet Sixteen underdog win from Ohio State is the lone time the Scarlet and Gray defeated the now 12-time National Champions. No one on the Ohio State roster in 2023 is on the team this season after the star of that win, Cotie McMahon, transferred to Ole Miss this offseason.
The matchup will not be played on campus at Gampel Pavilion but at the Huskies’ second home at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut.
There are now four public non-conference games announced for Ohio State this season. Tuesday, the annual Coretta Scott King Classic in Newark, New Jersey, included a matchup for the Buckeyes against former Notre Dame All-American Olivia Miles and the TCU Horned Frogs. On the week of Thanksgiving, one week after Ohio State travels to Connecticut, the Buckeyes play two games at the Baha Mar Pink Flamingo Championship against a potential pool of opponents that includes Alabama, Belmont, Harvard, Minnesota, South Florida, West Virginia, and an eighth school that has not been announced, as of publishing.