The Buckeyes won the first of two West Coast games when they defeated the Washington Huskies on Thursday night in Seattle, Washington. The Huskies led for less than 40 seconds of the 40-minute game in a performance for Ohio State that showed the trip wasn’t going to slow a team on a three-game winning streak.
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Now, senior guard Chance Gray returns to Eugene after spending her first two seasons in the NCAA as an Oregon Duck to try to lead the Buckeyes to a sweep of Big Ten teams in the Pacific Northwest.
Euro majors clash
There was a guard matchup Thursday between Sayvia Sellers and Avery Howell against Jaloni and Kennedy Cambridge that lived up to the hype. Now the battle plays out inside on Sunday between Ohio State sophomore center Elsa Lemmilä and Oregon sophomore forward Ehis Etute.
It won’t be a height battle, as Lemmilä is six inches taller than Etute, but the challenge for the Buckeyes’ Finnish giant is physicality. Etute played a bench role in his first season at Oregon and got off to a slow start this season.
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However, the forward arrives on Sunday leading the team to a four-game winning streak. The Luxembourg forward faces his rivals inside the paint and looks for a high percentage of interior baskets. If Etute fails, the sophomore has a good chance of recovering on her own.
Etute doesn’t give up plays and has the tenacity to take on the 6-foot-6 Lemmilä on the boards with a Big Ten leading 85 offensive boards, seven more than Minnesota Golden Gopher Sophie Hart in the standings.
Foul trouble hurt Etute during the first half of the Big Ten schedule, but calmer play has limited the whistling lately. In the last three games, Etute averaged 21 points and 9.7 rebounds and led the Ducks in scoring in two of the three games.
The inside presence has been hit or miss for Ohio State this season, and a lot of that had to do with Lemmilä having two offseason surgeries and still needing time to recover when the season started. Like Etute, Lemmilä enters Sunday’s game on a stronger pace than usual, with 12.3 points and 9.3 rebounds per game as a secondary scorer to point guard Jaloni Cambridge.
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For Oregon, Etute is the focal point who then opens up a pair of guards. First up is senior guard Mia Jacobs, who transferred to Eugene from Fresno State and contributed 18.3 points and 10 rebounds per game to the Big Ten.
Jacobs’ increased difficulty and decreased reliance on offense led to a drop to 14.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game in his final NCAA season. Still, Jacobs is the team’s second-best rebounder behind Etute and the deep, long-shot threat for Oregon.
Then there’s sophomore guard Katie Fiso, who played less than 10 minutes per game as a freshman but is now the team’s offensive leader. Fiso isn’t a strong three-point shooter, only taking 1.2 shots from deep per game, but Fiso is a mid-range, inside threat who can pass the ball as well as almost anyone in the conference. The guard ranks second in the Big Ten with 6.8 assists per game, and part of the reason Etute’s game is improving on the interior lately.
The question looming in Ohio State’s paint is the availability of redshirt freshman forward Kylee Kitts, who has missed the last five games due to a shoulder injury suffered in the final minutes against the TCU Horned Frogs on Jan. 19, 2026. Before Thursday’s game, Kitts was moved from out to questionable on the injury report, but was downgraded back to out before the game began.
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After the win, head coach Kevin McGuff floated the idea that Kitts might return Sunday. Doing so gives the Buckeyes an advantage, depending on how many minutes the team wants the forward to play. Otherwise, Oregon doesn’t have the same inside duo of Ava Heiden and Hannah Stuelke as the Iowa Hawkeyes and Ohio State’s four-guard lineup will still have success without a crippling mismatch.
Chance Gray returns
Ohio State and Oregon played last season in Gray’s first game against his former coach and program. The Cincinnati native called Eugene, Oregon his home for two seasons before leaving head coach Kelly Graves for McGuff, who coached Gray’s older sister at Xavier University.
However, this is the first, and likely only, time Gray will be on campus again for a competitive basketball game. Gray’s return comes at a time when the senior is playing some of the best basketball of her career and is quietly the Buckeyes’ second-leading scorer in Big Ten play this season.
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Last season, when Gray played shooting guard and spent most of her time waiting for passes outside the arc, the then-junior’s effectiveness was unpredictable. Gray reached double-digit scoring in nine Big Ten games last season, but never in a streak of more than three games.
Currently, Gray has a streak of 11 games with 10 points or more, and 10 of them are in conference. Gray averaged 16.1 points on three shots from beyond the arc per game over that stretch and had four games with at least 20 points.
“I just feel like my job is to be as consistent as possible and be at the same level for the team,” Gray told reporters. “We know Jaloni (Cambridge) is going to do what he does, but you can look at me and know that I’ll be there regardless of the times we need to get going, whether it’s helping, scoring or stealing on defense or just being there and in the shape that I need to be.”
Defensively, Gray, the offensive first, is contributing at a high level. Against the Huskies on Thursday and their group of four talented starting guards, Gray had three steals, his single-game high in the 25-26 season.
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The Buckeyes landed in Eugene on Friday, which means Gray has time to visit some of the campus sites he missed or show places to his teammates. That’s not exactly on his mind.
“I’m really excited to get back and play in the gym there and see some of my old coaches,” Gray said. “But other than that, I’m looking forward to winning.”
Big Ten Ranking
A week ago, the Buckeyes went to Iowa City, Iowa, and returned home with nothing but a humiliating loss. That Iowa win moved the Hawkeyes into second place behind the UCLA Bruins with a 9-0 record in the Big Ten.
It looked like Iowa and UCLA were on the verge of clinching the conference, but then the Hawkeyes traveled to California. The Hawkeyes’ three-game week ended with three losses to the Bruins, the USC Trojans and back home Thursday against the Golden Gophers.
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Now, all of that to say that UCLA is still running away with the conference right now, but Iowa’s losses put Ohio State in third place in the Big Ten. This is important because the top four teams in the conference earn a bye to the quarterfinals of the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament.
In the Big Ten, teams don’t have to expect to win the annual tournament to reach the NCAA tournament, and the Buckeyes are a virtual lock for one of the March Madness spots. Still, the more wins Ohio State has, the better chance the team has of hosting the first two rounds of the tournament.
It’s been three years since the Scarlet and Gray exited the Second Round with losses to the Duke Blue Devils and Tennessee Volunteers the past two seasons, both in Columbus.
The Buckeyes’ final six opponents feature five teams with realistic chances of taking one of those top four spots, including the Oregon Ducks on Sunday.