Raiders three-peat as national champs

Winning national championships isn’t normal, but if Northwestern’s women’s basketball team started to think otherwise, it would be understandable.
“It’s like winning the lottery,” said senior point guard Kami Kuhlmann. “You don’t think it’s going to happen to you. But it does sometimes.”
Apparently, winning the lottery can happen three consecutive times. The Raiders became the first team in NAIA Division II women’s basketball history to win three consecutive championships on Tuesday, March 13, defeating College of the Ozarks (Mo.) 75-62.
After a successful tournament in which she averaged 22 points per game, Kuhlmann shredded the defense in the final game for 27 points on 8-17 shooting.
She also pulled down eight rebounds and dished out six assists. She was named Most Valuable Player of the tournament. Kuhlmann and junior forward Kendra De Jong were also named to the All-Tournament First Team.
Kuhlmann was very reluctant to talk about her MVP status, trying hard to deflect any questions into talk about her teammates. But she admitted that winning the MVP was a good way to end her career.
“What better way to go out?” Kuhlmann said. “I’m a senior, I’m never going to play again. If I’d had a bad tournament and we had still won, obviously I still would have been happy.”
Winning another championship capped off a season that didn’t start especially well for NW. The Raiders struggled to adjust to a new team initially, stumbling to a 4-4 start.
“We were a completely different team, and people expected us to be something we weren’t,” said sophomore post Sam Kleinsasser. “We struggled at first. But we gradually found our roles, and it all worked out.”
It worked out so well, in fact, that the Raiders won their next 11 games in a row. They would finish the regular season 23-7.
“I feel like deep down we always knew our potential,” Kleinsasser said. “We could see our talent in practice every day. It just took us a while to put it all together.”
When the tournament began, the Raiders were faced with a new problem: The expectations brought on by success in previous years.
“Coach warned us ahead of time that we were going to be introduced as defending national champions,” Kleinsasser said. “But this is a new year. We aren’t defending anything. This was a new journey.”
Fortunately for NW, it  had been in the same situation, as defending champions last year. According to Kuhlmann, this year the Raiders were even hungrier for a title.
“In the past we have outplayed our opponents,” Kuhlmann said, “But this year I feel like we had a little bit more of a hunger. Sometimes we just willed ourselves to win.”
In the final game, the Raiders faced College of the Ozarks, a team that has made four national championship appearances, yet has never won a title.
Though the Raiders were hot out of the gate, running out to a 36-18 lead, the Bobcats quickly closed the gap, ending the half on a 13-1 run. Kuhlmann, however, never lost her confidence.
“I never felt like we were going to lose,” Kuhlmann said. “Even when they made their run and their crowd was going crazy, I was just like, ‘I don’t know why you are going crazy. We are going to win anyway.’”
Though College of the Ozarks would tie the game midway through the second half, the Raiders outscored the Bobcats 25-14 from the 12:36 mark on. Appropriately, Kuhlmann led the way,. When the final buzzer sounded, NW was once again the team crowded around the banner.
“You are just beside yourself,” Kleinsasser said “The biggest reward is thinking back on the season.  I didn’t think about the historical context during the season. But after the season is over, you kind of think ‘Wow. What just happened?’”
For the second consecutive year, Northwestern will graduate a tournament MVP, as the Raiders lost Becca Kramer last season. Though the team will clearly miss the graduating seniors, Kleinsasser thinks that the program’s success has left them in a good position for the future.
“Our principles will still be there, we will still have talented girls,” she said. “It will be an adjustment just like this year, but this year we showed that if we keep persevering, things will work out.”