Dynamic duo powers NYU to finals

More news about: New York University | UW-Stout
Mar 20, 2025
 
Belle Pellecchia was unstoppable for NYU in the Violets' win over UW-Stout in Thursday night's national semifinal
Photo by Brian Bishop, d3photography.com
 

By Riley Zayas
for D3sports.com

SALEM, Virginia — As NYU’s senior forward Natalie Bruns says it, there are plenty of teams capable of throwing a serious punch over the course of a game. But, when you get to NYU, those punches seem far from isolated; repetitive possession after possession, quarter after quarter. 

It is why the Violets entered Thursday’s national semifinal against UW-Stout as the defending national champions. As the winners of 60 straight. As the favorite in this field of four to hoist the championship trophy for the second season in a row. 

And over the course of the 40-minute battle with the Blue Devils, NYU proved exactly why all of those notables have come as no mistake. Marked by defensive grit, strength on the boards and Belle Pellecchia’s second-ever 20-point game in the NCAA Tournament, the Violets downed UW-Stout, continuing their storybook season in a 74-55 victory. 

NYU, back in the national title game for the second year in a row, will face Smith College on Saturday at 4 p.m. ET. It will be a rematch of the 2024 championship game, won by NYU, 51-41, in Columbus, Ohio. 

“Our whole team is just relentless for 40 minutes,” Bruns, who had 19 points to go along with eight rebounds and five assists, said postgame. “I think a lot of teams can come out and give a punch, but with the way we’ve trained and the amount of time that we’ve given to get this program to where it is, it’s really, really hard to keep up with us for 40 minutes.”

in Thursday's semifinal, they were difficult to stop and even harder to score on. The nation’s leader in team field goal percentage, NYU shot 47.2 percent in the opening half and took a 41-20 lead into the intermission, largely a credit to the scoring of Bruns, Belle Pellecchia, and Caroline Peper, who each scored in double figures. 

Defensively, they put immense pressure on Stout’s ball-handlers—a crucial part of their game plan for defending the Blue Devils—and denied open looks from the perimeter at the same time. Their length challenged the Blue Devils, who had more than earned their spot in Salem with tournament wins over Ripon, Whitman, UW-Whitewater, and Scranton. 

“Our league does a lot to get you ready for this stage,” UW-Stout head coach Hannah Iverson said of the WIAC. “The WIAC puts us in a great position to be successful. The one thing NYU has that isn’t within that league is a ton of length like that. I think that affected us more offensively than we thought it would. We were more picturing it on the defensive end, but it affected us on the offensive end as well.” 

That length revealed itself in several ways. NYU made it difficult for the Blue Devils to rely on their bread-and-butter dribble penetration on the offensive end, and took away the three-point shot for the majority of the contest. Stout went 0-for-10 from beyond the arc, with guard Lexi Wagner, the nation’s third-best three-point shooter in terms of percentage at 46.3 percent, taking just two 3-point shots in the game’s entirety. 

Raegan Sorensen finished as Stout’s high scorer with 29 points, becoming the program’s all-time leading scorer in the process. But nobody else had more than 11, making it impossible for the Blue Devils to fully tap into the offensive balance that proved so critical in prior wins in a historic tournament run. 

“Sorensen had an incredible game, but Lexi Wagner was one of our big three that we highlighted as a player we must shut down,” NYU head coach Meg Barber noted. “They shoot the three too well to start opening up the inside. That was a huge part of our game plan, ‘If they’re going to score on us, make it be twos,’ and I thought these guys bought in in an incredible way.”

In similar fashion to NYU’s previous two contests, the semifinal had a back-and-forth pattern to it in the early goings. But unlike those prior two wins on sectional weekend, the Violets changed gears before halftime. After Stout cut the deficit to a single point on four different occasions down the stretch of the first quarter, Pellecchia and Bruns took control in the way that senior All-Americans do, with a 9-1 run in the final 3:04 of the period. 

The duo accounted for all nine points, Pellecchia sparking the key stretch with a steal in the backcourt and the uncontested fast-break layup that followed. Bruns added a three, Pellecchia scored off another Stout turnover—of which there were 10 in the first half—and Bruns swished a pair of free throws with seven seconds left for NYU’s first double-digit lead of the night, 22-12. 

“We talk about momentum plays and I think the first quarter was a good example of that,” Pellecchia, who had a team-best 22 points, said afterwards. “Leading with our defense to try to turn that into offense. Like I said, we’re just a dynamic duo. We’ve been doing this together for a little bit.” 

That set the tone for a second quarter in which NYU asserted its control. The Violets outscored Stout, 19-7, in the 10-minute stretch leading into the intermission, putting an exclamation point on the quarter with Caroline Peper’s three that beat the halftime buzzer. NYU rode its wave of momentum off the floor with a 21-point lead in tow, having scored 12 of its 19 second-quarter points in the paint. 

Turnovers played into the dramatic first-half swing perhaps more than any other element in the opening half. And there was no player more integrated with NYU’s intense ball pressure than Pellecchia, who also shot 10-of-15 from the field. With less than 30 seconds left in the first quarter, the senior read Wagner’s eyes and leapt in front of a pass near half court, sprinting to the other end in a flash for a layup off her third steal of the game. She made plays of that caliber all night, with the Violets scoring 20 of their 41 first half points off turnovers, compared to Stout’s two. NYU finished with 24 points from takeaways along with 24 fast-break points. 

“They bought into giving intense pressure for 40 minutes,” Barber said. “Our game plan tonight was all about ball pressure and toughness, because we knew they had great guards who could post up. We couldn’t just let them see the post all game. I thought we did an incredible job with that.” 

While Stout narrowly outscored NYU, 35-33, over the final two quarters, the Violets’ lead was never threatened. The separation never dipped below 17 points as NYU seemed to counter every Blue Devils’ score and converted on six of its final 10 shots in the win. 

“I’m really proud of the way these two (Bruns and Pellecchia) led our group in terms of bringing our toughness to the court for 40 minutes and really not having any let-ups to be able to sustain our lead and end with the win,” Barber said. 

Now the Violets look to end their 2025 tournament run in the same fashion—and against the same opponent—as they did a season ago. For Bruns, Pellecchia, and their NYU teammates, the past two seasons have surpassed even their highest expectations when they first walked onto the NYU campus. With a win on Saturday, the Violets would become the first team in program history to win consecutive national titles, and the first in Division III women’s basketball since Amherst in 2018. 

“Knowing that this program is bigger than any one person is the thing that has ultimately led us to be back in this position,” Barber noted. “Very easily last year, we could have made it when Bruns returned about Bruns, or when Belle is doing her thing, we could’ve made it about Belle. They are as humble as they come, and because of their leadership, we’re back in this game.” 

Riley Zayas is publisher of The scoop on D3 women's hoops, on Substack.