The NYU women’s basketball team won the 2025 NCAA Division III National Championship on Saturday, March 22, marking — for the first time in program history — its second consecutive national title, its 62nd straight win and the program’s highest scoring season with 2,726 points. The Violets are only the third D-III team to have back-to-back undefeated seasons, and the fourth to win back-to-back NCAA titles.
“Winning the championship was the goal for us,” head coach Meg Barber said. “The way this team went to work every day, they take the game seriously and they take pride in how they represent the NYU uniform every day.”
The Violets secured a dominant win over Smith College 77-49 with a stifling defense and forceful offense. NYU opened the game on an 11-0 run starting with a layup from sophomore Brooke Batchelor, and kept the lead. Senior Belle Pellecchia led in scoring with 18 points, followed by graduate student Natalie Bruns, who notched her fifth double-double of the season and finished the game with 16 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists.
Bruns, in her fifth year on the team, is a two-time WBCA National Player of the Year, two-time UAA Player of the Year, last year’s Metropolitan Basketball Writers Player of the Year and this year’s NCAA Elite 90 Award winner, as the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA at the championship site.
NYU’s defense was remarkable throughout the tournament, scoring an average of over 30 points off turnovers in the six games, including an impressive 47 points off of Trinity College’s turnovers in the Round of 32. Bruns posted four blocks in Saturday’s game after her career-high of five blocks in the game against State University of New York Geneseo in the Sweet 16.
All five of NYU’s starters scored in the double digits, guiding the team’s lead to as many as 35 points with 6:36 left in the fourth quarter. Bruns averaged 18 points and almost nine rebounds per game in the tournament, Pellecchia averaged 16.5 points and junior Caroline Peper averaged 13 points with a career-high 29 points over Gettysburg College in the Elite Eight.
Saturday’s match-up marked the first championship rematch in NCAA D-III history — Smith and NYU went head-to-head in last year’s tournament final. NYU defeated Smith by a much smaller margin in 2024, 51-41. That championship win brought the team’s record to 31-0 and concluded the Violets’ first undefeated season.
Now, a year later, the team has doubled their undefeated record with a second perfect season. The Violets have the eighth longest win streak in NCAA women’s basketball history in any division.
After winning the UAA championship title outright on February 21, the team moved swiftly through the NCAA tournament, forcing wins over Gallaudet University, Trinity, SUNY Geneseo and Gettysburg up through the Elite Eight. In the Final Four showdown against the University of Wisconsin-Stout, the Violets scored 74 points to UW-Stout’s 55. The 19-point win margin tied with the team’s Feb. 9 game against the Washington University in St. Louis as the smallest for the Violets this season.
It was the last dance for five of the players: graduate students Jamie Behar and Bruns, and seniors Pellecchia, Mary Kate Fahey and Chloe Teter.
“The experience we’ve had here,” Bruns said. “The relationships we’ve built here, the process that we’ve bought into is something that is going to change our lives forever.”
Contact Sidney Snider at [email protected]
