BIG TEN BASKETBALL MEDIA DAYS

October 7, 2021

Kevin McGuff

Ohio State Buckeyes

Women’s Head Coach

KEVIN McGUFF: Good morning. Thank you to everyone in the Big Ten for putting this together. It's a great event. I'm happy to be here.

I'll start by saying I'm really excited about our team, what I think we can accomplish this year. We return some really key members off last year's team. I think kind of our strength will be our back court with Madison Greene returning at point guard, Jacy Sheldon off the ball will be a big part of the team we're going to be this year.

It's been certainly a different year this year, past COVID sort of. Our team has certainly enjoyed more of an opportunity to be together this summer, certainly this fall. I think we're definitely further ahead than we were a year ago. I'm excited to get started. Thank you.

Q. Jacy, maybe the way her taking a step forward as a sophomore, can you talk about how you see her continuing to grow.

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, no, she's an incredible player. She's an exceptional athlete who really plays well in our system. We've traditionally had one of the faster teams in the country. That really plays to her strengths. She's got great speed and quickness.

Thus far this year she's improved on the defensive end as much as anything. I think she'll take a big step there. I expect her to have an outstanding season and be one of the best players in the Big Ten.

Q. Talk about how Ohio heavy your roster is.

KEVIN McGUFF: Ohio is a great state for grassroots basketball, AAU, and high school. Certainly that's been a huge priority for me and for our staff, to make sure we can keep as many Ohio players home as possible.

We haven't kept them all home, but I think we've got the right ones for our program. We will certainly go to other areas to recruit the right student-athletes to be a part of our program, but as much as we can keep Ohio kids home, that's certainly something we want to do.

Q. It seemed unfair that the people who were penalized were the kids that had nothing to do with the situation involved. Whatever your final thought was about that episode? Then spinning forward, what does it mean to have that for a team that could be there this year?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, no, that was a very difficult situation for our kids and for our program. Our kids had worked incredibly hard to put themselves in position to have a chance to be in post-season. It wasn't on the table for us.

As an institution we had to make difficult decisions. I think we made the right decision, but it was really tough on our kids.

I think the success we had last year, given that we didn't have the opportunity to go to post-season, really speaks to the character of our kids. They certainly could have mailed the season in, but we had a very successful season, won a lot of games, really had a terrific year. That speaks volumes to our players' character.

Now it is terrific that we've put that behind us hopefully and will have an opportunity to be in post-season this year if we were to have the season where we earn that. But that is certainly a goal for us and something that we're going to work incredibly hard to hopefully be a part of.

Q. Not only are you trying to bring Ohio student-athletes into your program, you've been instrumental in bringing a lot of international kids. Talk to people who don't know anything about that.

KEVIN McGUFF: Great question. We have ventured into the international market in terms of adding players from overseas to our roster. We've had great success with that. Really it started as USA Basketball sort of expanded, started to send more teams overseas, we were going to watch kids from the United States play, we said, Hey, we're going over to these tournaments, we might as well expand our recruiting efforts and look internationally.

There's more players from overseas coming to the United States to play than there ever has been before. We've worked harder at that in the last few years. We've been able to add some really talented players.

It will never be kind of like at the forefront of who we are as a program and the kids that we're going to recruit, but certainly it's kind of a secondary market for us. It's been really instrumental in us continuing to grow the program.

Q. Could you speak about the impact of name, image and likeness on your players.

KEVIN McGUFF: It's a new world for all of us in that space. We have had some success. Some of our players have had NIL deals that have been very good for him. We're at a great position at The Ohio State University, the city of Columbus, which is a great market for this and a city that supports not only Ohio State, but specifically they support women's athletics. We have a lot of powerful female business owners in the city who are ready to get behind some of this stuff.

We've had a lot of good opportunities for our kids so far. I think that's going to only continue to expand.

Q. Been a bit of a void at the center position. You have some veteran-type players coming back. What do you see there?

KEVIN McGUFF: Last couple years we've had incredible depth around the basket with our posts. We're not quite as deep in that position.

I will tell you Rebeka Mikulášiková and Tanaya Beacham have both had outstanding off-seasons. They're going to step up with more playing time, more opportunity. I think you'll be impressed with what they bring to the program this year.