New York College’s males’s and ladies’s basketball groups went into Saturday with the chance to turn into the primary faculty to win Division III titles in every sport.
The Violets nearly achieved the feat.
The NYU girls capped off one other excellent season and earned back-to-back nationwide championships by handily defeating Smith Faculty 77-49 in Salem, Va.
However the males fell seconds wanting profitable their first-ever D-III title when Trinity Faculty rallied to win 64-60 in Fort Wayne, Ind.
Belle Pellecchia led the Violets (31-0) with 18 factors and 4 different gamers reached double figures as the ladies gained their 62nd consecutive sport.
“It was part of our game-plan to be aggressive at the start,” Pellecchia mentioned after the win. “Defense is the name of the game, and if we can get going on defense then we can get going on offense.”
Sadly, the NYU males’s (29-2) quest to earn their first Division-III title of their first championship look since 1994 fell agonizingly brief.
Hampton Sanders (15 factors) completed off a three-point play with 1:28 remaining for a 60-56 NYU lead, however they might not maintain on.
Need to tune into as a lot March Insanity as you may? DIRECTV Stream and Hulu + Reside TV each have you ever lined with each channel you’ll want, plus free trials.
Trinity ended the sport on an 8-0 run and took the lead on Henry Vetter’s three-pointer with 12.8 left, which made it 62-60.
Sanders’ three-point try hit the highest of the backboard on the following possession and Trinity sealed the sport with two free throws to earn its first D-III title.
As for the NYU girls, it is just the third NCAA Division III girls’s workforce to publish consecutive undefeated seasons and the fourth to win consecutive titles.
The Violets’ 62-game profitable streak is the eighth-longest in NCAA girls’s basketball historical past at any stage.
“The winning streak wasn’t important to me. Winning the Championship is what the goal was,” head coach Meg Barber mentioned. “The way this team went to work everyday. They take the game seriously and they take pride in how they represent the NYU uniform everyday.”
