On Friday, December 20th, Stanford women’s basketball fell to No. 11 Ohio State at the Chase Center in San Francisco by a final score of 84-59. Ohio State forward Cotie McMahon led the way for the Buckeyes with 16 points and 6 rebounds while guard Madison Greene (15 points), forward Ajae Petty (14 points & 9 rebounds), and guard Chance Gray (14 points) were right behind her. Stanford forward Nunu Agara was the top performer for the Cardinal with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Ohio State improves to 12-0 overall while Stanford falls to 8-4.

AUDIO: Stanford Postgame Press Conference: Ohio State

BOX SCORE: Ohio State vs. Stanford-Friday, December 20th

“I thought Ohio State, they’re a very good team,” Stanford head coach Kate Paye said after the game. “They are very athletic, they have some next level athletes, incredible plays. They jumped on us from the very beginning. I thought their press rattled us early and kinda shook us and shook our confidence. We were a total no show. Especially in the first half.

“I was pleased that our team picked it up and was more aggressive and more competitive in the second half, but this is really an education for our team. This is next level or high level college basketball and we do have a lot of players stepping into new and larger roles. That’s been the theme of our preseason and we have made a lot of progress since our first game against Le Moyne, but we clearly have a long way to go.”

From the opening tip, Stanford struggled to get going on offense as Ohio State led 16-6 at the end of the 1st quarter. Madison Greene was up to five points for the Buckeyes, doing a nice job of leading the way for them. Stanford was shooting just 2-11 from the field, unable to get into any offensive flow.

In the 2nd quarter, Stanford settled in a bit as Ohio State outscored them 17-13, making it a 33-19 game at halftime. Stanford guard Tess Heal was up to five points for the Cardinal, finding a bit of an offensive rhythm. The problem was Ohio State was still doing whatever they wanted on offense as Gray was up to eight points while Greene had seven points. Ohio State was shooting 14-32 (43.2%) from the field while Stanford was shooting 8-25 (32.0%) from the field.

In the 3rd quarter, it was a little faster paced, though still advantage Ohio State, who outscored Stanford 24-20. This gave the Buckeyes a 57-39 lead entering the 4th quarter. Nunu Agara was starting to get going a bit for the Cardinal with nine points, but she wasn’t getting nearly enough help.

“The name of the game was spreading out, attacking the basket, making a layup, and all the players on our team have been playing basketball for a long time and that’s the first thing you do when you go to itty bitty practice: work on your layups,” Paye said. “So, we’ll definitely be spending more time on that. I thought Nunu really got it going in the second half and she has aspirations of being a great player and she certainly has the tools and I was pleased, I thought our team stuck with things, I didn’t see bad body language. I thought people stuck together, but I know that our team wants more and we have done a lot of nice things preseason, but we have a lot of things that we really need to work on.”

In the 4th quarter, Ohio State outscored Stanford 27-20 en route to an 84-59 victory. Stanford woke up a bit towards the end of the game, but they dug themselves too big of a hole in the first half and never were able to get on any sort of run to make this game interesting.

The biggest stat from this game is Stanford having just four assists and a whopping 19 turnovers. Ohio State loves to force turnovers with their pressing defense and that sure seemed to make an impact in this one. With point guard Talana Lepolo still out, Stanford is struggling with their ball security as she is the most experienced ball handler on the team.

At this point, all that Stanford can do is learn from this game and get better. They’ll get a bit of a break for the holidays before ACC play begins. They’ll return to action on Thursday, January 2nd at SMU. That game will air at 5:00 PM PT on ACC Network.

“Obviously it’s kind of the start of the second season with ACC coming up,” Paye said. “Unfortunately we’re already kinda already in the hole once with our game against Cal, but our team is going to have a wonderful holiday break, spend time with friends and family, and I said rest, recover, reflect and come back with a renewed commitment to get in the gym and work on the things that we need to work on individually and collectively and I have total confidence in our team.”

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