"This was the goal for us": NYU stole the show in Salem with its dominating title game win
The Violets averaged a 23.5-point margin of victory at the Final Four en route to their second-straight national title
SALEM, Virginia — It seems that more often than not, the end to it all doesn’t play out in the way you dream it up, with confetti streaming down, a trophy at center court, the crowd chanting your name. Championship dreams are derailed in all sorts of ways over the gauntlet of a six-month season, whether by injury, a cold shooting night, or a stronger, more experienced opponent standing in the way.
But not for NYU. Not this season.
The Violets had an unstoppable mentality to them in 2024-25, a kind of force of nature that seemingly overwhelmed anything and everything that threatened to slow down its momentum. Head coach Meg Barber described her team as “machine-like” in yesterday’s postgame presser. It’s a fitting description for a squad that won every one of its 31 games by 19 points or more, the most notable coming in Saturday night’s 77-49 defeat of Smith for the program’s second national title in a row.
Since cutting down the nets in Columbus a year ago for the program’s first national title since 1997, Barber and her team fielded question after question along the lines of, “Now that you’ve won it all, how do you keep the momentum? How do you avoid complacency?” As the win streak grew from 31 to 40, and 40 to 50, and then 50 to 60, they only got to be more and more frequent.
And yet, when you watched the Violets play, it’s clear that complacency was never an option. If consistency, passion, and energy could be combined, quantified, and turned into a team stat, few would argue that NYU would be leading in the country in that category too. Last season they played more deliberate, often working the ball into the post and All-American forward Morgan Morrison. Evidently, it worked pretty well. They were 31-0 a year ago. But this season, they changed that, replacing it with a faster-paced, run-and-gun kind of style. Not the sort of up-tempo offense that leads to rushed 3s and 20 turnovers though. The kind that makes every observer in the crowd just shake their head and go, ‘Wow.’ The kind that yields a 1.6 assist-to-turnover ratio, 29.5 points per game off turnovers, and 21.1 assists per game.
NYU played on a different level this season, seemingly never satisfied with the ever-growing win streak, nor the unanimous No. 1 national ranking, nor the title of “defending national champions.” Their goal was clear from the beginning, and they authored their own story, becoming just the third program in D-III women’s basketball history to go undefeated in back-to-back seasons.
“How do you put it into words?,” Barber said after it was all said and done on Saturday. “I think the streak still doesn’t really mean that much to me. This was the goal for us. We knew who was in our locker room. This is one of the most fun teams I’ve ever coached here. They go to work every day.”
And that work showed up time and time again. The target on their backs was about as big as it could’ve been. The Violets were every opponent’s de-facto national championship game, in large part because just about everyone across the country had an expectation that NYU would be the team cutting down nets in Salem when the final buzzer sounded on the 2024-25 season. Yet they never seemed caught off guard. The closest half they had in the tournament came against SUNY Geneseo in the Sweet 16, as First Team All-American point guard Belle Pellecchia sat for the majority of the first two quarters due to foul trouble. It was a two-point game at the intermission, but ended up as a 21-point victory.
“This has always been about us,” Natalie Bruns, the D3hoops.com National Player of the Year two seasons in a row, said Saturday in response to a question about staying motivated in the midst of a 62-game win streak and more media attention than any other D-IIII program in the country. “It’s never been about anybody else’s locker room. I think the experience we’ve had here, the relationships we’ve built here, the process we’ve bought into is something that’s going to change our lives forever.
“That’s what motivates us. It’s the people around us and everything that we’ve put into it. So we went into every game, being like, ‘How can we be the best versions of ourselves today?’ Even though box scores looked a certain way—we could’ve been satisfied with a lot of different things—we wanted to be the best version that we could be.
“I think we did that.”
They did that to such a degree that it feels the only rightful comparison is the WashU dynasty of the early 2000s, under the famed Nancy Fahey. The Bears won four championships in a row, including the first championship game win by 25 points or more in 2000. NYU’s 28-point win over Smith last night became just the second in the history of the D-III women’s tournament, whose history dates back to 1982. If you haven’t already gotten the message, NYU is navigating in rarefied air, with no signs of hitting the brakes anytime soon. That said, moving on from a senior class highlighted by Pellecchia and Bruns will be anything but easy.
“What I will say to the streak is that we have an incredible group of seniors that are moving on, so our team will look very different as the streak continues,” Barber said. “But NYU basketball is forever changed because of this class. It is historic. It is GOAT level. These two players (Pellecchia and Bruns), plus Mary Kate Fahey and Chloe Teter, are the reason that we’re in this position to begin with. I couldn’t be a prouder coach and I’m a fan. I’m a fan of this team because I’ve taken so much pride in watching them grow up, in a sense, and evolve as basketball players, evolve as people, and lead us to this unheralded position that we’re in.”
Saturday’s final was unlike most championship games, and it wasn’t for a lack of effort on the part of either side. Smith battled hard, and as the game went on, settled in. But NYU had walked into the Cregger Center with zero intention of taking a loss, not when they had come this far, and not in Bruns’ and Pellecchia’s final game representing a program they gave so much to. It was 9-0 by the 7:41 mark of the first quarter, and 22-5 just over four minutes later. The Violets were crisp, connected, and opened the game on full throttle. It seemed everything they did was quick—the passes, the defensive traps near halfcourt, the transition offense as a whole—and at the same time, it never looked too fast for the Violets. By the time 6:36 remained in the contest, NYU’s lead had swelled to 34.
“We preach all the time, even if you don’t get the ball on the run, you’re creating space for somebody else,” said Pellecchia, who scored 18 points and finished as NYU’s leading scorer for the second game in a row.
Smith struggled to keep up with that spacing while simultaneously sprinting back to the defensive end after a missed shot or turnover. The game was won by NYU in the first quarter, no question about it.
“They came out and played a really good first quarter in a lot of facets of the game,” Smith head coach Lynn Hersey noted. “I think as a team, we’re mature enough to understand. They beat us in the first quarter. That was the game.”
NYU seized the moment once again, just as they did all season. The lights never shone too bright on the Violets, and they handled the spotlight remarkably. Natural pressure builds when you dominate to the degree they did the last two seasons, but this year especially. Part of that is having a coaching staff who finds the balance between intense focus and embracing joy, both contributing in the pursuit of perfection.
“We can’t reveal all our secrets, but I’m not one to sing and we had a singing locker room before the game,” Barber said postgame. “It was just to get our group a little bit loose today. They’re a fun group, and they’re so machine-like, that it was important for us to relax a little bit and get ready for tip-off.”
Their foot stayed on the gas pedal the entire way, leading to NYU’s 10th consecutive game with 70+ points. That doesn’t happen by accident. Nor does having all five starters in double figures. It was the same on the defensive end too, where Smith, the nation’s No. 11 team in offensive efficiency, shot for a season-low 32.1 percent from the field. That came two days after holding UW-Stout, D-III’s third-best team in offensive efficiency, to its second-lowest point total of the season (55) in the semifinals.
“I cover and call a lot of Division I mid-major basketball games,” ESPN+ color analyst Kelly Burke said at the end of Saturday’s broadcast. “I truly believe this group could go in and beat a lot of high-level mid-major programs.”
As the crowd in purple cheered and NYU hoisted its trophy high at center court amidst a floor covered in confetti, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” appropriately rang out over the arena’s PA system. One line the famous song sings, "If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” Well, in a gym nestled beneath the rolling Virginia mountains and playing their fourth game away from home in an eight-day span, the Violets proved they could indeed, win anywhere. They went 16-0 away from New York City this season, capping a year that would fit right into the script of a movie. Sure, they were the favorites all along. But how often does the preseason favorite end up taking it all so convincingly, even more so when the recent trend points to more parity than ever? And then winning a title game, against the same team they played the season before, by 28?
What we saw in Salem on Saturday night is certainly something that will stick with this reporter for quite awhile. The same is probably true for everyone else in attendance. Will we look back one day, 10 years, 20 years from now, and view this team as the greatest in D-III women’s hoops history? Only time will tell. But this NYU team was undoubtedly something special.
“The people absolutely make the experience,” said Bruns, who nearly had a triple-double in the title game with 16 points, 13 rebounds, and eight assists. “If you can invest into your relationships, learn from the people around you, and put yourself in positions to be around great people, you’re going to be incredibly proud of yourself and the things you can do with those people. Basketball is a really fun sport, obviously, but it’s the relationships 100 percent that make this all so special.”
The Scoop on D3 Women’s Hoops All-Final Four Team
Note: For players that played in two games, per game averages are listed. For those that played in one, individual stats from that single game are listed.
Most Outstanding Player: Belle Pellecchia, G, NYU: 20.0 PPG, 5.0 RPG, 5.5 APG, 3.0 SPG
Natalie Bruns, F, NYU: 17.5 PPG, 10.5 RPG, 6.5 APG, 4.0 blocks/game
Brooke Batchelor, G, NYU: 10.5 PPG, 10.5 RPG, 3.5 offensive reb/game
Hannah Martin, G, Smith: 15.5 PPG, 5.5 RPG
Raegan Sorensen, G, UW-Stout: 29 points, 14/26 FGs, 8 rebounds, 2 steals
Sammi Beyer, G, UW-Oshkosh: 15 points, 6/11 FGs
This is a very nice article. Thank you, Riley!