2025 NCAA Division III women's basketball champions -- the New York University Violets Photo by Brian Bishop, d3photography.com

By Riley Zayas
for D3sports.com

SALEM, Virginia — NYU made its statement in the 2025 NCAA Division III women's basketball national championhip game’s first three minutes, a sending message nobody inside the Cregger Center on Saturday afternoon could overlook. They played with a sense of freedom that gave way to an unmistakable rhythm from the jump. Their connectivity was near-perfect, whether trapping a Smith ball-handler on the defensive end, or sprinting down the court and whipping passes between each other en route to a fast-break layup.  

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NYU scored on its first seven possessions on the path to a commanding 15-5 lead by the 6:07 mark, and never took one glance back, claiming the program’s second-straight national title in a 77-49 victory over Smith. NYU became one of four programs in D-III women’s basketball history to win consecutive national titles, with the last being Amherst in 2018. 

For a team that entered the title game with every reason to possess an ego, NYU played with just the opposite mentality. The Violets opened the contest as if they had everything to prove, well aware of the quality of their opponent, and with a clear mission in mind. 

“We knew who was in our locker room,” NYU head coach Meg Barber said, a net hanging around her neck. “This is one of the most fun teams I’ve ever coached here. The way they go to work every day, I don’t want to say they take my personality, but I go into that locker room the same every day. They take the game seriously. They take pride in how they represent The Sisterhood and the NYU uniform every day.” 

NYU senior forward Natalie Bruns, the 2025 D3hoops.com National Player of the Year, closed her collegiate career with an individual performance just as impressive as that of her team, scoring 16 points to go along with 13 rebounds, eight assists, and four blocks, the latter three of which were team-highs. 

Alongside Bruns, fellow senior Belle Pellecchia, who was named the Tournaments Most Outstanding Player, finished as NYU’s leading scorer for the second time in this Final Four, putting up 18 points. She pushed the pace from her spot at point guard while also playing a crucial role in NYU holding Smith to a shooting percentage of 32.1 percent and 14 turnovers. 

Each NYU starter finished in double figures in scoring, with Jamie Behar and Brooke Batchelor each tallying 13 points apiece, in addition to Caroline Peper’s 10. NYU shot 51.8 percent from the field; their third shooting performance of the 2025 NCAA Tournament above 50 percent.

“Recently, and in the second half of the year, I’ve been trying to take what is given to me and read whatever is going on on the floor,” Bruns said. “That’s because I have great teammates by my side. An assist that doesn’t happen unless the person on the other end of the pass is able to make the shot, and at all times, I have four other players who are extremely capable of making incredible plays.”

Bruns noted after NYU's national semifinal win over UW-Stout that the Violets' recent run of success, which now features consecutive national championships for the first time in NYU history, is “not normal”.

Indeed it is not. Nor is a 28-point victory in the national final. The last time a team won by at least 20 was in 2018, when Amherst took down Bowdoin, 65-45. NYU’s margin of victory on Saturday was the largest in championship game history since Nancy Fahey’s WashU squad rolled past Southern Maine, 79-33, in 2000. 

“We had a ton of respect for [Smith],” Barber said. “I thought they shot the three incredibly well and we just had to make sure that we were going to defend the three-point line and stick to our game plan: Knowing our personnel—they have a lot of great one-on-one players—and lock into team defense, which our team is known for. 

“Coming out the way that we did, I felt really good heading into each timeout and quarter that if we could keep our foot on the gas, and make sure our matchups were tight, we were going to be in a pretty good place.” 

Saturday’s championship game was a rematch of the 2024 national final, a 51-41 NYU win over the Pioneers in Columbus, Ohio. But the Violets' performance in the second go-around bore little resemblance to that meeting a year ago. 

For one thing, NYU’s lead through the first 10 minutes was 26-8, far from the 15-10 advantage the Violets held over Smith at the end of last year’s first quarter. And while the second quarter proved tighter, the Violets maintained the momentum into halftime, leading 41-22 at the intermission. In Columbus, the second quarter was the point at which Smith stepped up, holding NYU to just eight points to cut the halftime deficit to two. Such was not the case on Saturday. 

The key? Singing. Or in other words, a loose locker room in the minutes leading up to tip-off. 

“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 with a laugh. “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.”

Bruns won the opening tip for NYU, and 13 seconds later, provided the assist to Batchelor, a Virginia native, for a reverse layup and 2-0 lead. Then came a Smith turnover, and Pellecchia scored on the other end for the Violets, this time off a pass from Batchelor. Jamie Behar gave NYU its next five points in a 44-second span, leaving Smith head coach Lynn Hersey with no choice but to call a timeout at the 7:41 mark, her team already trailing 9-0. 

“They came out and played a really good first quarter in a lot of facets of the game,” Hersey said. “I think as a team, we’re mature enough to understand. They beat us in the first quarter. That was the game.” 

Many of the elements from NYU’s 74-55 semifinal win over UW-Stout were present again in the title game. The Violets' quick start against Smith mirrored their game-opening 22-12 run against the Blue Devils two days prior. Once again, there was intense NYU ball pressure and the forced turnovers that came as a result. By the 4:40 mark of the second quarter, Smith had turned the ball over eight times, with zero assists to its credit. Seventeen of NYU’s 41 first-half points came off turnovers, including the first-quarter layup from Bruns that pushed the Violets’ lead to double-digits for the first time, just 2:30 into the game. 

“What makes them hard is that it’s hard to duplicate that length when you’re working on it in practice and preparing,” Hersey added. “Their length was part of it. We got a little off track with what we were trying to do to counter the pressure. Those early possessions, they really capitalized on.” 

NYU created chaos on the defensive end with its trapping and intensity, giving Smith little room to work the ball around for an open shot. And as soon as the Violets came up with a stop—whether by a missed shot or turnover—they immediately looked to push the pace, navigating at breakneck speed in the game’s early minutes. 

NYU tallied 11 fast-break points in each of the two halves, staying aggressive in transition with remarkable offensive speed, highlighted by quick passes, cuts to the rim, and a steady dose of ball movement. It was in that aspect that NYU’s cohesion truly revealed itself. 

“Having Brooke Batchelor in our starting five really helps in pushing in transition, and Natalie too,” Pellecchia said postgame. “I think we preach all the time, even if you don’t get the ball on the run, you’re creating space for someone else. We know that Smith plays at a slower pace and probably wanted to slow us down, so we made it a goal to push in transition.” 

“Cohesion is about selflessness and having players that have played together,” Barber added. “I said this the other day, typically, when you get to this point in the season, the teams that are still standing have experience. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not just cohesion on the offensive side, it’s cohesion on the defensive side as well.”

NYU adjusted its style from last year’s title run to a more up-tempo, full-court pressing approach in 2024-25. The fast-break points, transition scoring opportunities, and a number of forced turnovers stemmed from that, something Barber pressed postgame. 

“They have wildly outperformed any expectation I ever had when we decided that we were going into this pressing, full-court, up-tempo style this year,” Barber said. “It was wildly different than what we did last year with our personnel. Even today, I think it’s almost a shock to the system. You can watch us on film, but when you see the speed of Brooke Batchelor, for example, she’s kind of unheralded. People don’t really talk about her, and she’s sprinting around, coming up with offensive rebounds. It’s a fun group to coach.”

Smith eventually settled into a sort of offensive rhythm to close the second quarter, with eight points in the final 3:04, including a pair of 3-pointers from Hannah Martin and Uta Nakamura that got the Pioneer fans back into the game. But it was far too little, and certainly too late. The Violet offense picked back up where it left off in the third quarter, and continued stretching the gap wider. 

The Pioneers opened the second half by scoring eight of the first 14 points, but NYU soon re-asserted its control, closing the third on a 14-4 run. Batchelor and Bruns each had six points in that stretch, as the Violets took a 63-36 advantage into the fourth, where they also outscored Smith, 14-13. 

It was the storybook finish to a championship quest that began as soon as NYU finished cutting down the nets in Columbus a full 12 months ago. And as Pellecchia and Barber said in the postgame news conference, there was never a reason for this Violets team to lack motivation in the quest for a repeat, even as the wins continued to stack upon each other, climbing all the way to 62 on Saturday afternoon. 

“We just have a good group of winners,” the senior guard, who averaged 16.5 points per game in six victories in the tournament, noted. “When you see your upperclassmen, your teammates, your close friends putting in the work, you want to do that too. I think that’s how we started this journey, and we just wanted to continue that. It was sort of like, ‘Why not? Why not make it two? Why be satisfied with one?’”

“When you say, ‘What’s the motivation?’ look at these guys,” Barber added, motioning to Pellecchia, Peper, and Bruns sitting at the table with her. “What isn’t the motivation? Why wouldn’t we want to give them our absolute very best every day? That’s all it’s ever been about. Getting these guys to the place that we knew they were capable of and deserved.” 

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