Britt Prince and Nebraska faces Jaloni Cambridge and Ohio State women

Every year, dynamic freshmen enter the Big Ten women’s basketball conference. Now, with an 18-team conference, that is even more true than before.

Last season, the quality of new guards in the conference was hard to match across the power conferences. Ohio State women’s basketball benefited from the play of Big Ten Freshman of the Year, point guard Jaloni Cambridge.

This season, Cambridge’s ceiling continues to rise and on Sunday, the Buckeye guard goes head-to-head against another guard from the class that, if not for Cambridge and the Michigan Wolverines’ outstanding 2025 recruiting class, would have sat on the freshman throne.

Nebraska Cornhusker guard Britt Prince has the Big Ten side securely on her shoulders as the two sides matchup with potential Big Ten seeding and NCAA Tournament resume ramifications.

Blockbuster matchup

Last season, fouls limited Jaloni Cambridge and the then-freshman had what is still the worst game of her college career. Ohio State traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska where Cambridge scored no points in 17 minutes, due to foul trouble.

Prince had an off day with eight points but grabbed a season high eight rebounds. The Buckeyes won due to a 23-point game from senior guard/forward Taylor Thierry and a 15-point, 10-rebound, double-double for junior forward Cotie McMahon.

This season, the Buckeyes cannot afford the same kind of outing from Cambridge and nothing this season suggests that it is even a possibility. However, it felt like fans were robbed the chance for Jaloni Cambridge and fellow freshman Britt Prince to start a rivalry that could last through the 2027-28 season.

Not this year, as both of the sophomores excel for their teams, and lead them offensively. The two have similar offensive styles too. Prince will go to the basket frequently, using her speed to get around opposing defenses.

When the defense sinks in to try and stop it, Prince can also shoot from beyond the arc. The Nebraska sophomore leads the team with 18.4 points and 4.3 assists per game, and there is little drop in productivity in Big Ten play with an 18.3 scoring average and 4.6 assists per game.

Nebraska will set screens to get Jaloni Cambridge off of Prince, but the moments when the two go at each other will be must-see college basketball.

Next to Prince is four-year Nebraska senior Callin Hake. Although Hake does not average the same offensive output scoring at 8.5 points per game, she will find open teammates with a career high 4.1 assists per game.

It might be a slow start offensively for Jaloni Cambridge in the game with Nebraska’s defense. The Cornhuskers will likely set up in a half court zone, which puts more players in the paint and in Cambridge’s way. Ohio State’s passing will be key to find open guards on the perimeter and inside to bigs.

After that, the Buckeyes have to finish shots. Against Wisconsin, Ohio State shot 31.3%, which is good compared to the entire season of lackluster efficiency, but it was a poor night compared to the last five games where the Buckeyes averaged 44.3%.

Since the Badgers were a smaller side without a strong interior game, Ohio State only shot 16 shots from beyond the arc, the lowest since it hit 15 against the Illinois Fighting Illini on Jan. 7, 2026. It could be a similar case on Sunday against the Cornhuskers.

Elsa Lemmilä’s challenge

Despite the loss of Potts, and the graduation of former center Alexis Markowski, Nebraska head coach Amy Williams has not abandoned the inside game. The Cornhuskers will still attack the basket and try to get behind opposing defenses. That means a challenge for starting Ohio State center Elsa Lemmilä.

Against the Wisconsin Badgers, Lemmilä paired up with forward Gift Uchenna and had a strong day of half court defending. Lemmilä held Uchenna to 1-for-7 from the field and the Ohio State big out rebounded Uchenna 14-12, even though foul trouble only put the Wisconsin big on the court for 20 minutes.

Lemmilä added four blocks on top of her second career double-double of 14 points and 14 rebounds. Those boards tied a career high against the Ohio University Bobcats at the start of Lemmilä’s freshman 2024-25 season.

However, powerful inside bigs do challenge the Finnish center who plays more of a finesse game. Lemmilä can be muscled off a rebound, even after the center grabs the ball. For Nebraska, that is not as much of a problem since coach Williams’ inside game features her own group of bigs who leverage speed over power.

Nebraska has three forwards who play inside for the Cornhuskers — Amiah Hargrove, Jessica Petrie and Eliza Maupin. The trio stand between 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-3, so Lemmilä has the size advantage, slightly. However, if Nebraska uses two of them, it will cause more work for guard Kennedy Cambridge, who slides into a de facto center role when Lemmilä and redshirt freshman Ella Hobbs sit on the bench.

One-on-one, matchups favor Lemmilä, who also showed improvement offensively from Sunday’s loss to Iowa into Thursday’s win over the Badgers. Against the Hawkeyes, Lemmilä‘s role in the offense was usually standing around and waiting for a guard to get open, which was a product of the plays called and designed by the coaching staff.

In previous games, Lemmilä took some risks in getting to the paint herself, but looked more aggressive against the Badgers.

“Obviously, we didn’t play well, and we did make some adjustments,” McGuff said. “Part of it was her [Lemmilä], how she was playing, and if they weren’t guarding her closely in the perimeter, how she could be effective. And I thought she made some great adjustments today to really impact the game on that end of the floor for us.”

Nothing but NET

At the beginning of January, Land-Grant Holy Land broke down how the NET rankings work, and how they bolster a March Madness resume. After Ohio State’s win over the Wisconsin Badgers on Thursday, every game through the end of the regular season is a Quad 1 game.

In other words, the wins mean more and the losses hurt slightly less, depending on a myriad of factors.

The Big Ten’s 18-team conference, and the current “every team plays each other once” scheduling model, insulates teams to automatically have tougher schedules than non-power conferences. So, every time a team plays UCLA (No. 2 in the NET rankings at the time of writing), it boosts their resume a little bit.

Ohio State is 4-3 this season in Quad 1 games, with defeats to the UConn Huskies, UCLA Bruins and Iowa Hawkeyes in the loss column. The Buckeyes already played the bottom five teams in the conference, so what remains is a gauntlet all the way to Indianapolis, where Ohio State will likely compete in the 15-team field, unless the Buckeyes drop all of the last eight games and teams at the bottom of the conference win nearly all of their remaining games.

Bracketology experts at ESPN, The IX Basketball and Her Hoop Stats all have the Buckeyes in one of the top-16 spots that guarantees the team hosting duties in the First Round and Second Rounds of March Madness.

Ohio State hosted the first two rounds in the last three seasons but lost in its second game of the tournament in each of the last two seasons.

Kylee Kitts update

After the Thursday win, Land-Grant Holy Land asked McGuff about the specifics of Kitts’ shoulder injury and while the Buckeyes’ coach avoided putting a specific label on the type of injury, he provided positive news on her return.

“She’s [Kitts] getting closer,” McGuff said. “I talked to her today, she felt better than she’s felt. Is the best day she’s had so far. So I think we’re getting close. I’d say probably still questionable for Sunday, but we’re much closer than we were a couple days ago.”