From doubters to believers

With the national title game poised on a knife’s edge, the Denison women’s basketball team huddled for the final quarter of their season.

Ten minutes to play, down by a single point to undefeated University of Scranton in Salem, Virginia.

As Big Red players placed their hands in the huddle’s center, they shouted, “No regrets” — one of two mantras adopted for the NCAA Tournament. As the buzzer sounded, summoning teams back to the court, players shouted the second: “Why not us?”

It’s a question nobody outside of Granville, Ohio, was asking before the start of the season. Or, even before the start of the NCAA Tournament.

“No one projected us to win,” said point guard Abby Cooch ’27, the tournament MVP. “A lot of people counted us out for the wrong reasons — and look at us now.”

The Big Red overwhelmed Scranton in the fourth quarter with stifling defense and clutch shooting on the way to an emphatic 55-41 victory and the program’s first NCAA championship.

From doubters to believers. That’s the story of the 2025-26 Denison women’s basketball team, one that showcased athleticism, depth, and togetherness on the national stage over three weekends in March.

“We knew how much talent we had at the start of the season, and it didn’t matter what people on the outside thought of us,” said Ada Taute ’27, the team’s leading scorer.

A squad that had never advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before this season became the first team in Division III history to win a national title despite being unranked in the preseason polls.

In the NCAA Tournament, the Big Red (30-2) not only beat teams with greater playoff pedigrees, but they dominated them. In six tournament wins, Denison:

• Upset the second-, third-, and fourth-ranked teams in the final Top-25 poll
• Trailed for less than seven minutes in the entire tournament
• Posted an 18.5 point margin of victory

“We are 18 players strong,” coach Maureen Hirt said. “We have players capable of making big plays, we have role players who contribute every game, and we have players who hardly play, but keep morale high on the bench with their celebrations.”

The indelible images from this championship run are the joyous faces after wins, the net-cutting ceremonies, and the snow angels in glittering confetti at center court.

But the road to victory was paved over four long years. It’s the behind-the-scenes work, filled with sweat and sometimes tears, that the rest of the basketball world missed when they discounted the Big Red’s chance for glory.

Nobody needed to tell Hirt the potential that Denison offered when she accepted the job in 2022. She was a standout player for conference rival Kenyon College and an assistant coach for conference rival Oberlin College.

“I thought a national championship was totally doable when you looked at the resources, the support, and the facilities at Denison,” Hirt said. “They had a history of success across their athletics program.”

Hirt inherited the job from Sara Lee, now deputy director of athletics, who retired from coaching after leading the Big Red to 502 wins.

The key to challenging for titles, Hirt thought, was recruiting student-athletes who fit her coaching philosophies.

“We wanted to become more athletic and uptempo,” she said.

The Big Red won just 10 games in 2022-23, but Hirt’s first recruiting class added seven players — an eighth would join as a transfer — that formed the nucleus of their championship squad. The group included: Cooch, Taute, Violet Mitchell ’27, Morgan Kress ’27, Adelyn Moore ’27, Maeve Perry ’27, Maeve Gaffney ’27, and Izzy Arguelles ’27. A year later, Anelly Mad-toingue ’28, Grace Dressell ’28, Gillian Magner ’28, and Jamie Elliott ’28 joined the team.

Denison won 20 games the following season, but progress is rarely linear. This group, which includes Brooke Toigo ’26, Jess Zittel ’26, and Katie Houpt ’26, would be tested in ways they never imagined.

As the Big Red opened the 2023-24 season, players received shocking news. Hirt had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare cancer that affects the lymphatic system.

“It’s our first college experience, one of the biggest adjustments in life, and when we found out Coach Mo had cancer, it put a lot of things in perspective,” Mitchell said.

Eighteen days after being hospitalized, Hirt returned to the bench. While the coach’s inspirational story has been well documented, the Big Red dealt with other adversity.

Taute, Mad-toingue, and Kress played a combined nine games due to injury last season as Denison fell back to 15 wins. Yet as setbacks mounted, the team’s resilience grew.

“We had so much composure this season down the stretch,” Hirt said. “Teams would go on runs, but this group has been through so much. It’s not the end of the world. There are bigger challenges in life, right?”

At the championship level, fine margins often separate winners from runners-up. Talent is vital, but intangibles matter, too.

“Denison’s X-factor was its team culture,” Lee said.

Hirt is a believer in mudita — the Sanskrit/Pali word that means the selfless delight in the good fortune, happiness, and success of others, without envy or comparison. The Big Red embodied it.

They played for each other, hung out off the court, and put aside individual goals.

The Big Red spent the final 12 days of the season in Virginia, electing to remain there after their Elite Eight win rather than bus home before the Final Four. It was two weeks of hotel living with little to do other than eat, sleep, study, and practice.

“It was fun because we were already so close,” Cooch said. “If we weren’t as close, it might have been a different experience.”

On a team powered by younger players, it would have been easy for the three seniors to feel overshadowed. Instead, each found ways to contribute on and off the court. Houpt was instrumental in creating the social media posts that have made the basketball team’s Instagram and TikTok accounts must-follows.

As a collective, they connected with the campus and the Granville community through theme nights and by lending their practice jerseys to friends to be worn in the stands.

“We’re a good team, and we have fun with it, and I feel like watching us have fun fuels the excitement in our fans,” Taute said.

In the fall of 2025, during the first practice, Hirt watched the tenacious Molly Dorighi ’29 flying around the gym, cutting off dribbling lanes, and creating havoc. The coach knew she finally had enough athleticism in her lineup to full-court press for 40 minutes a game.

“Molly is such a fiery competitor,” Hirt said. “She’s got that dawg in her.”

Dorighi is one of three first-years on the team, along with Hannah Grudzien ’29 and Isabelle McFadden ’29.

The quickness of Dorighi and Toigo, coupled with the ball-hawking abilities of teammates, became a significant factor in the team’s success in pressing opponents into mistakes and fatigue. The Big Red forced an NCAC-best 19.8 turnovers per game, often leading to easy buckets. They averaged a conference-best 75.2 points a game, frequently generating offense from their defense.

“You’re not always going to get steals with a press,” Hirt said. “But when you have players like Molly and Brooke, they just wear you down because you’re having to make quick decisions.”

After posting a 24-1 regular-season record, the Big Red were stunned in the first game of the conference tournament, losing to DePauw University, 75-59.

Before heading to their first NCAA tournament in a decade, Hirt had the team watch lots of film and listen to a guest speaker. Denison women’s soccer coach Sarah Brink played and coached on a dynastic Williams College program that reached the NCAA title games four times. On three occasions, those teams lost in the conference tournament.

Brink’s message was simple: The national tournament represents a new season, a fresh start for attaining goals. That is when the team adopted the “No regrets” and “Why not us” mantras.

“One of my takeaways from Sarah’s talk is that some teams get to March and they’re like, ‘I’m ready for this to be over,’” Hirt said. “While others have the mindset of, ‘Oh, this is just the beginning.’ I think our team took that message to heart.”

The Big Red roared through March, winning six NCAA Tournament games, all but one by double figures. The players’ confidence swelled with every celebration.

In the national semifinal, the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh wilted under Denison’s relentless pressure. The fourth-ranked team fell behind 22-2 in the first quarter, struggling to get the ball up the floor and into its half-court offense.

The Big Red did not have their own way in the championship game as neither they nor Scranton found an offensive rhythm for three quarters. But trailing by the score of 34-33 heading into the final 10 minutes, Mad-toingue recalled the calm and determination in the huddle.

“We were like, ‘Give it your all, do not leave a single ounce of effort on the court,’” she said. “That’s exactly how we won that game.”

Cooch scored 11 fourth-quarter points, draining three 3-pointers and flashing her MVP bona fides. Taute and Mad-toingue combined for the rest of the offense in a title-clinching 22-7 run.

“We’ve been dreaming about this since the start of the season,” Cooch said. “We talked about ‘what if we made the tournament’ and ‘what if we did this’ and ‘what if we did that.’ Then, it became reality, and it was amazing to see how it all turned out.”

In the locker room, the Big Red doused themselves with water, danced to music DJ Cooch was playing, and reveled in the moment. They took pride in their historic achievement and pleasure in turning doubters into believers.