NYU Women’s Basketball’s Historic Winning Streak Ends ─ But Legacy Will Live On
By Anthony Paradiso
NYU WOMEN’S BASKETBALL Head Coach Meg Barber gives her team a pep talk and draws up a play. Photo credit: NYU Athletic Communications, VICTOR NEWMAN PHOTOGRAPHY.
The New York University Violets women’s basketball team’s season (29-1) ended on March 19 in Salem, Virginia at the NCAA Division III Final Four.
The two-time defending National Champion Violets lost 60-52 to the University of Scranton (32-0), who, like them, came into this semi-final sporting an undefeated record. However, the big difference between the two programs was that NYU women’s basketball had not lost a game in over three years; March 11, 2023, to be exact, when they fell in the Elite Eight.
During the postgame press conference, NYU Head Coach Meg Barber summed up her team’s historic season, which included winning a fifth straight University Athletic Association (UAA) championship.
“Heck of a ride,” she said. “Incredible journey…the people in that locker room are just incredible and we have a lot to be proud of. I don’t think a lot of people had us here [the Final Four], but we really fought and clawed to get here…Good luck to Scranton moving on and we’re going to look back on this season with a lot of pride.”
NYU women’s basketball won 91 consecutive games before losing in the Final Four. On the way, they broke the Division III record for consecutive wins (82) that was held by Washington University of St. Louis on February 8. The Violets then passed a 90-game streak set by the UConn women’s basketball team from 2008-2011, making their streak the second longest in college basketball history. Only one streak remains longer and that is the 111-game streak that the UConn Huskies achieved from 2014-2017.
Barber has posted an incredible 150-22 record over eight seasons at NYU. She has also helped guide some great players to great heights of both the individual and team variety.
Last season, graduate student Natalie Bruns led the team in scoring (17.2 points per game) and was named a First Team All-American, Region IV Most Outstanding Player and D3hoops.com Player of the Year, among other accolades. This season, Violets’ senior forward/guard Caroline Peper filled her former teammate’s shoes.
Peper, from South Easton, Massachusetts, racked up three Player of the Year awards in 2025-26: Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA), Region IV, and UAA. In terms of stats, she led the UAA in scoring this season with 18.6 points per game and scored 108 three-pointers which set an NYU single-season record. Peper was also named to the All-UAA First Team for the second consecutive season and finished her career ninth all-time in scoring in NYU history with 1,451 points.
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However, NYU’s 2025-26 women’s basketball team was not a ‘one-woman show.’ They had other outstanding student athletes like Brooke Batchelor, a junior guard, who finished second on the team in points per game (13.5) while playing in every game this season. For this, Batchelor joined Peper on the Region IV First Team and was an All-American Honorable Mention.
Sophomore guard from New Jersey, Zahra Alexander, was another iron woman for the Violets this season, playing in every game of the regular season and playoffs. Alexander received Region IV second team honors for finishing with 12.3 points per game. Batchelor and Alexander finished ninth and 10th respectively in points per game in the UAA conference this season.
Freshman guard, Aila Kaibara came to the Big Apple from Arizona and made a big splash. Kaibara was named the Region IV Rookie of the Year for having a season during which she started 28 out of 30 games and finished second on her team in three pointers (55) and 16th among UAA players in points per game (10.1).
Last but not least, the head coach who guided these players to such heights, Barber, was named both WBCA NCAA Division III Coach of the Year for the second straight year and Region IV Coach of the Year.
Barber spoke glowingly of her team’s accomplishments this year. “I thought tonight was a win for this team in terms of what they showed the NYU community, the NYU fans what they were made of. It’s going to be a really big hole for this program to fill the shoes of Caroline Peper. She is a real one of one.”
Peper then described what this team meant to her. “This team really means the world to me. I’m the only senior — they’re everything. I said to them at the end, I couldn’t have picked a better team to go out with. There’re no other girls that I wanted to be my teammates this year…just it’s such a fun group of girls and I’d do anything for them, and I’d do anything for another game with them.”
Lastly, Peper explained what she’ll remember about the past four years during which she was part of two National Championship winning teams. “Every moment with them and everyday kind of goes by in like a blink, but every single practice is ingrained in my brain and the ones that stick out the most are the hardest ones. So, preseason for us, is something that we really lock into, and preseason has gotten us this far and we worked that hard together — that’s what really pushes us here is working for each other and so the relationship with my teammates is really what I’m going to remember.”
March’s Final Four may have marked the end of an era for NYU women’s basketball, but the future will remain bright for the program as long as it can hold on to the nine underclassmen and seven juniors it had during the 2025-26 season.
