Comfort zone: Often inscrutable, Buckeyes coach Jim Foster warming up to a favorite team.

Arms crossed, face blank, Jim Foster will direct, cajole, encourage and admonish his players and the officials during Ohio State’s Sweet 16 game against Stanford Saturday night in Berkely, Calif., and you’ll never know it. That nod? Peering over his glasses? The half-smirk? After 31 years as a coach, that’s all Foster needs. “He’ll just [...]

Jantel Lavender: This star is part of a constellation.

To someone looking in from one of those boxcar-big observatory telescopes, Jantel Lavender probably resembles the sun in the Ohio State women’s basketball universe with 11 tiny teammates orbiting around her. The sophomore center is a star. Lavender has won the Big Ten player-of-the-year award in each of her first two seasons. As such, she [...]

With Lavender and Prahalis, Ohio State’s present and future equally bright.

It starts with players, and in women’s college basketball, it can end with players, too. If Ohio State Buckeyes Jantel Lavender and Samantha Prahalis added Y chromosomes, regular questions about jumping to the NBA would be following them as they started the men’s NCAA Tournament Saturday. Instead, when the Buckeyes open as a No. 3 [...]

Ohio State eyes end to postseason drought.

Jim Foster wanted a change of pace. Not content with winning three straight Big Ten regular-season women’s basketball championships, the Ohio State coach decided the program need to pick up the tempo after the 2006 season ended. “We blew it up,” said Foster, who is in his seventh season coaching at OSU and 31st overall. [...]

Sammy Prahalis: The engine that drives Ohio State.

“We started on the path of wanting to be more athletically diverse, and Sammy was sort of the final piece of the puzzle,” coach Jim Foster said. “I’m a guy that when he gets a point guard that ‘gets it,’ that has that competitive dimension, the job is theirs. That’s only happened five or six [...]

Ohio State women’s basketball: Old school no more.

The Buckeyes won a fifth consecutive Big Ten championship this season with sophomore center Jantel Lavender and freshman point guard Samantha Prahalis triggering an explosive, wide-open offense. Longtime Foster observers might note that Prahalis, in particular, has more leeway on the court than most of his former point guards ever have. She is a fearless [...]

Defenses take tough approach to Ohio State’s Lavender.

The rap on Big Ten women’s basketball is that games within the conference are as delicate and pretty as a bone bruise. Heading into Ohio State’s game tonight at Iowa, Buckeyes sophomore center Jantel Lavender knows not to expect a tea party atmosphere when she enters the low post. Ohio State’s past three opponents — [...]

Buckeyes pair measuring up: Lavender, Prahalis develop chemistry on and off the court.

Twelve games into their first season together, the on-court relationship between the two is as evident as the statistics. Lavender leads the Big Ten in scoring at 22.8 points per game. Prahalis leads in assists at 6.3 per game. Forty-two of the first 75 assists of Prahalis’ career have gone to Lavender. Their off-the-court relationship [...]

Ohio State’s Foster likes this team’s toughness.

From the beginning of practice through the first nine games of the season, Ohio State women’s basketball coach Jim Foster has seen enough growth in the 18th-ranked Buckeyes to offer an observation, followed by a mild aftershock. “I think we’re a lot better,” he said. “We’re better today than we were at any point last [...]

Ohio State loaded with talent.

Former players frequently visit Ohio State in the summer to chat with their old coaches and occasionally play a pickup game with ex-teammates and underclassmen. It meant something more when Katie Smith scrimmaged with the current Ohio State Buckeyes this summer, then offered a few opinions to coach Jim Foster. That’s not a bad scouting [...]