<\/p>\n
SALEM, Virginia \u2014 One more win.<\/p>\n
That is all that separates the University of Scranton women\u2019s basketball team from claiming the program\u2019s second national championship. Standing in its way is Denison University in the NCAA Division III final Saturday at 4 p.m. at Roanoke College\u2019s Creeger Center.<\/p>\n
Scranton (32-0) advanced to the title game by dethroning two-time defending champ NYU in Thursday\u2019s semifinal, 60-52. The Lady Royals also halted the Violets\u2019 91-game winning streak, which was the second-longest in NCAA basketball history, men\u2019s or women\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Coming off such an emotional win, the concern would be for the Lady Royals to have a letdown. It\u2019s not unlike the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, which after shocking the powerful Soviet Union team still had to beat Finland to earn the gold medal.<\/p>\n
Coach Ben O\u2019Brien, however, isn\u2019t concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re putting all of our attention to the next task at hand,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cWe\u2019re not spending any of our time talking about NYU. It was a great game (Thursday) night, but all of our time, all of our attention, all of our focus is on Denison.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t come here to beat NYU. We came here win a national championship. That\u2019s what we\u2019re working toward and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to look to do (Saturday).\u201d<\/p>\n
Having a day off in between the semifinals and the final helps.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have that extra day,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cWe\u2019re used to playing back-to-back nights the first couple weekends of the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fast start propelled Denison (29-2) to an 82-61 victory over Wisconsin-Oshkosh in its semifinal Thursday. The Big Red never trailed, jumping out to a 20-2 lead and leading by as many as 24 points in the first half.<\/p>\n
Five players scored in double figures with senior Brooke Toigo and junior Abby Cooch netting 13 points apiece. Junior Ada Taute followed with 12 points, junior Adelyn Moore had 11 and sophomore Anelly Mad-Toingu\u00e9 contributed 10 points. Taute also grabbed nine rebounds, Mad-Toingu\u00e9 had eight and Cooch dished out six assists along with six rebounds.<\/p>\n
Taute was named a Women\u2019s Basketball Coaches Association All-American, while Cooch was selected All-America honorable mention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a very well-balanced team. Obviously played a great game against Oshkosh and were in control of the game from the start,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be important, as always, to lead with our defense and try to make things as difficult as we can for them. Offensively, we have to play our game. Share the ball, attack the paint, find 3-point shooters, play through our post. All the things we\u2019ve done all season long we\u2019re going to need to do at a high level (Saturday).<\/p>\n
Denison likes to press and has size. Mad-Toingu\u00e9 stands 6-foot-3, Taute is 6-foot, Toigo is 5-foot-11 and Moore is 5-foot-10.<\/p>\n
\u201cPressure is a big part of what they do and how we handle that pressure is going to be very important,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen that type of pressure many times this season. We do that a lot to other teams, so we practice against that pretty much on a daily basis. But how well we handle that will be a real key.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have good size across the board and good physicality, so that\u2019s definitely going to be a challenge. We have some size as well and some areas where we don\u2019t have size we have tremendous quickness. So it will be an interesting matchup as it relates to their size versus our quickness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Denison, the Lady Royals started strong in their semifinal win over NYU. Caroline Peper hit a 3-pointer eight seconds in for the Violets, but Scranton\u2019s defense held them to 1-for-13 shooting the rest of the quarter with four turnovers to take a 17-5 lead.<\/p>\n
With Meghan Lamanna and Elizabeth Bennett leading the way, the margin grew to 30-15 late in the second quarter. Lamanna had 11 first-half points, while Bennett scored all 10 of her points in the opening 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Brooke Batchelor hit a 3-pointer right before the buzzer to cut Scranton\u2019s lead to 30-18 and give NYU some life heading into halftime. The Violets opened the second half with a 10-1 run that pulled them within 31-28 with 5:47 left in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
But the Lady Royals didn\u2019t flinch. Coming out of a timeout, Lamanna hit a 3-pointer to ignite a 16-6 run that pushed the lead back to double digits, 47-31, heading to the fourth.<\/p>\n
NYU tried to rally. It closed to within 52-44 with 5:39 left in the fourth on a 3-pointer by Olivia Lagao and had a chance to inch closer, but committed turnovers on consecutive possessions. A layup by Kaeli Romanowski gave Scranton a 54-44 lead with 5:03 remaining.<\/p>\n
Consecutive 3-pointers by Peper and Lagao pulled NYU within 56-52 with 45.1 seconds left. But one free throw by Sophia Talutto, two by Lamanna and one by Katie Gorski secured the victory and a trip to the final for the Lady Royals.<\/p>\n
Lamanna finished with 18 points, while Romanowski totaled 14 points, 16 rebounds and five steals.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollectively for them (the Lady Royals), they move the ball so well, they\u2019re going to find the open player,\u201d NYU coach Meg Barber said. \u201cLamanna is not going to force a shot if it\u2019s not there. She\u2019s going to find her open teammate and that\u2019s where I thought Romanowski really made quite a difference in terms of attacking the basket and being a little more of a scorer than she normally is.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit Scranton. I knew this was going to be an incredibly tough matchup. They\u2019re an incredible team. We parallel each other in so many ways and that\u2019s a tough team to play. Good luck to them moving on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scranton\u2019s top-ranked defense held NYU, the top-scoring offense in Division III, to a season-low point total and its lowest total since it scored 51 in the national championship game against Smith on March 16, 2024 \u2014 a game NYU won, 51-41. The Violets on Thursday night shot just 19 for 67 (28.4 percent), including 10 of 32 from 3-point range. The Lady Royals held a 47-34 rebounding edge, although NYU had a 21-18 advantage on the boards in the second half. Yasmene Clark grabbed 15 rebounds, 10 of which were offensive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very hard to guard. They have a lot of weapons out there,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get to all of their shooters. We did a good enough job of getting to their shooters throughout the game and making those shots as difficult as possible. For most of the game we did a great job on the defensive glass. Obviously, 21 (Clark) is so good on the offensive glass. She hurt us in the second half. But especially in the first half, we did a great job of holding them to one shot. Then we did enough in the second half to hold onto the lead.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, the Lady Royals are on the brink of a championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited for the opportunity,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cWe\u2019ve put a lot of hard work into getting to this spot, so we\u2019re really looking forward to the game. We\u2019re approaching it like we\u2019ve approached the previous 32 games and put everything we have into playing our best game on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thetimes-tribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SALEM, Virginia \u2014 One more win. That is all that separates the University of Scranton women\u2019s basketball team from claiming the program\u2019s second national championship. Standing in its way is Denison University in the NCAA Division III final Saturday at 4 p.m. at Roanoke College\u2019s Creeger Center. Scranton (32-0) advanced to the title game by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2339224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[350851,21848],"class_list":["post-2339223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-college-sports","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Lady-Royals-face-Denison-seeking-national-championship-\u2013-Scranton-Times-Tribune.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2339225,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339223\/revisions\/2339225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2339224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}