NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - NOTRE DAME VS OHIO STATE

March 23, 2026

Kevin McGuff

Jaloni Cambridge

Elsa Lemmila

Schottenstein Center

Ohio State Buckeyes

Media Conference

Notre Dame - 83, Ohio State - 73

THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with an opening statement from Coach and then take questions for the student-athletes.

KEVIN McGUFF: We can go right to questions.

Q. Jaloni, I wanted to ask you about Chance and what she meant to just your team in your two years at Ohio State.

JALONI CAMBRIDGE: Everything. She's a great leader. She led us through getting to where we were both the two years that she was here. I wouldn't trade the world for playing with her. I would do it again in every lifetime if I get a chance. I love her to death and I wish her the best in success in everything she does in her career.

Q. Jaloni, when you have a game like that, score 41 points, I mean, do you come out of it feeling like you could have done anything else or is it just frustrating?

JALONI CAMBRIDGE: 41 doesn't matter with an L. You want to win. If I could have scored zero and got a win, I would have been satisfied.

Q. It looked at times in the game, you were hurting. Were you dealing with an injury or was that just getting fouled and getting contact?

JALONI CAMBRIDGE: Basketball's basketball. It's a very high-contact sport, so things are going to happen. But can you play through it? And I was able to play through it today.

Q. Going through this, what do you feel like you guys were able to learn last year, turning up for March Madness, and what do you think you can take from this as you get ready for another year?

ELSA LEMMILA: We have a very young team, so there's still a lot of room for improvement. I think we just need to take what our coach has been saying after each of our games all year and just improve on those points so that we can get to the same position next year with the same team and win.

Q. Jaloni, there was just a lot of turnovers in this game. What was it about Notre Dame's defense that kind of kept the whole offense kind of off balance and how much did it hurt getting those early turnovers?

JALONI CAMBRIDGE: We just weren't taking care of the ball. I mean, it's Notre Dame, but we've been dealing with that all season, just not taking care of the ball. We just needed to make smarter plays. We could have got away with not turning the ball over if we just made smarter plays.

THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll excuse the student-athletes and take questions for Coach.

Q. Obviously every year is different, but what do you see -- I know, obviously, you lose three home games in a row like this, what do you see maybe you have to adjust with the program or how you want to do things or -- just what do you look at there?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, I mean, like, look, tonight specifically, I think it was turnovers. We got killed and usually we win the turnover -- points off turnovers. Tonight it was 25-25. But that's certainly the most points we've given up off turnovers all year. We had too many live-ball turnovers. Notre Dame just really made us pay. They got a lot of easy baskets in transition because of that, and we just couldn't overcome it.

Q. In the want-to statistics, it's like they dominated every one of those. How much is toughness? Did that show up tonight, lack of or just down low, just in general, the aggressiveness, it seemed like they took it to you a little bit.

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, I mean certainly, like I said, it started with turnovers, which really they made us pay. Hannah had eight steals. But when you're giving up layups off of turnovers, it's just really hard to overcome.

I thought in the half court, defensively we could have won the game that way, and everything else. But when they're getting layups off live ball turnovers, we just couldn't overcome it. And you got to give them credit. I thought their defense was really good and it created those turnovers. But we were going to have to play a much cleaner game than we played and not turn the ball over if we were going to win the game. And we didn't do it.

Q. Just in the first half alone only four 3-pointers attempted. I think you finished with 15, which is the second lowest on the season. How much of that was just the game plan going into it and then how much of that was just Notre Dame's defense within the game and adjusting to that?

KEVIN McGUFF: Well, I thought the other thing outside of us turning the ball over is we had stretches where we made the extra pass which led to a lot of great shots. But then we had stretches where we didn't make the extra pass and the offense got stagnant. It was during those times that we didn't get a lot of threes and we didn't get a lot of good shots. I would say that's probably the two biggest things is just the offense stagnating and turning the ball over that really, really hurt us tonight.

Q. When Notre Dame was here they were talking about their experience of making the Sweet 16, winning in the round of 32, and what they were able to learn from that. When you got a young team coming back, what do you think they can learn from losing in a game like this and being able to use that experience to put the momentum and get to the second weekend?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, you know, I think that at this time of year high-level execution has got to be a part of the equation to winning. I think they executed better than we did. Our lack of execution led to turnovers and not enough good looks at the basket. I think that's one of the things we got to learn. Like our execution just at times was really poor. I thought theirs was better. They executed, it led to more positive things than what we got.

Q. Maybe your mind is not on this yet, but Elsa mentioned that you guys are young, you have a lot of people coming back. These days that doesn't necessarily guarantee anything. How do you approach going into the off-season and knowing that there's pieces there but sometimes there can be kind of a moving target with your roster?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, no, it is what it is, in this day and age, of course. And we really, obviously, every kid we have in the program is a great kid, we have high-character kids. But to your point, we have a lot of good, young, talented players as well. I think if we can keep this group, the core of this group together and keep growing and getting better we could really end up in some great places. But it's just not easy just saying that. I think everybody likes being here and all that, but there's other factors in this day and age and we'll start to obviously dive into those as soon as possible.

Q. Walk me through what it means to you having a player like Jaloni Cambridge be able to score 41 points, tying her high, what does that mean to you with this game today?

KEVIN McGUFF: Well, Jaloni's obviously an incredible player, and she's a great kid, and we obviously love having her here, and we rely on her quite a bit. But she's also extremely competitive, and I think everyone could see she gave it everything she had tonight. We came up short as a team, but it certainly wasn't for what Jaloni was giving us and contributing to our team.

Q. To follow-up on that, you have seen Jaloni go through an off-season, now of, you know, coming off a difficult loss. What did you see from her last year to kind of be able to take another step forward, and what do you think she can learn from a game like this, a season like this?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, I think the biggest thing from last year to this year is, one, I think this year she made everybody around her better. She was obviously great in her own right, created a lot of shots and opportunities. She was also really good with her voice this year. I think she's got to, with Chance leaving, she's got to take another step there and really continue to be a great leader. And she did, she took a step. She talked to her teammates, she led in the locker room, in the huddles, on the court, more than she did her freshman year. I think she's going to take another step with that next year for us to continue to get better.