The Cavaliers celebrate their National Championship win. (Photo by: Audrey Hook.)

In a heated game versus the #6 seed, Pima Community College, the #4 seed JCCC women’s basketball team came out on top at the NJCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game with a final score of 75-67.

A close game throughout, halftime ended 36-33 with Pima not far behind the Cavs. Halftime was crucial for Head Coach Ben Conrad to keep momentum up for his girls in order to keep the lead.

“[At halftime I] just talked about how we’re in great shape,” Conrad said. “We’re up three. We made some mistakes and if we can clean those mistakes up we could kind of push this lead in the next 20 minutes. That’s pretty much exactly what happened.”

The second half kept up the close score line with the teams staying level for a majority of the third quarter. One team scored, the other simply kept right up. 

A jump shot from Aa’Mya Stacker was the beginning of the surge that sent the Cavs ahead of the Aztecs. Layla Scott sent two, 3-point jump shots straight into the net making the gap between the two teams even greater. 

In the fourth quarter, defense did not let up and kept Pima off the score sheet for a good portion of the 10 minutes. 

The game went down to the wire until a couple fouls on Pima led to several locked in free throw points for the Cavs, which secured them the win. 

Celebrations came easy for the team, immediately they were handed championship hats and shirts while “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khaled started blasting throughout the gymnasium. 

Coach Conrad feels validated to have won the championship. Even though this isn’t Conrad’s first championship, it is the first for all of the players.

“It feels amazing. It’s incredible validation of all the work we’ve done. You just feel so good for the kids. I’ve done this before so it’s one of those things where if you’ve never won a national title you just don’t know what it feels like until you do it. All these kids, this is their first one,” Conrad said. “For me it’s just incredibly validating for them to do this.” 

Freshman guard, Layla Scott, shared the same sentiment. 

“It feels amazing,” Scott gushed. “Especially coming in as a freshman, you never know what is going to happen. It feels really great. I enjoyed every part of it.” 

Layla Scott and Tony Tompkins after Scott was named MVP. (Photo by: Audrey Hook.)

Scott dominated the scoring with 25 points and was named the MVP. 

“It feels really great,” Scott said. “I never expected me to get it. Everyone was like ‘Layla, you got it. You got it,’ but I didn’t want to get a big head. I wanted to keep working towards wherever I wanted to go.”

Coach Conrad thought that Scott definitely deserved the award. 

“Her production these last two games was just unbelievable,” Conrad said. “She’s just impressive. She deserved it, absolutely.”

Still on cloud nine, freshman guard Heaven Smith, shared that the team’s win hasn’t completely sunk in for her. 

“Honestly, this feels unreal,” Smith said. “It still hasn’t even hit me yet. I’m so proud of my team. I’m so proud of all of us. This was really a team effort, wasn’t nobody individually. We really had each other’s backs and came out and did what we were supposed to do.”

Basketball is a family affair for Scott. Not only did she get to win a national championship, she got to share in the team’s win with her sister, sophomore guard Taliyah Scott.

“It’s been a long road and it’s all worth it because we’ve been practicing together ever since we were little,” Scott explained. “Now we’re on the court together in a national championship game. It feels amazing.” 

To win the game, Coach Conrad believes that Pima getting tired sealed the deal for the Cavs.

“We just stayed the course and kept following the plan,” Conrad explained. “We kept working for 40 minutes. I think in the fourth quarter we wore them down. I thought they got tired and I thought we didn’t. I think that’s really it.”

Scott credits the sophomore players and their great example for the freshmen having an impact on everyone working together for the win.

“Honestly, I think when our sophomores took leadership on the court,” Scott said. “I think everybody played a role in winning the championship game.”

Smith believes that the team’s defense played the most important role in winning the game.

“Definitely our defense for sure,” Smith said. “I think that’s what it is for all of our games. Our defense is unmatched. A lot of teams haven’t seen the type of defense that we play. We have a lot of athletes and a very deep bench and a lot of depth.”

On the flip side, Smith runs the ball down the court a lot as she is a point guard on offense. When asked what is running through her mind when she is handling the ball, she had this to say:

“For me my mindset is just attack, pace, speed,” Smith explained. “A lot of teams can’t handle the speed that we have in our point guard spots. So just get in, get out there, and push the ball.”

Big tournaments like this can pose different challenges and Conrad believes that the biggest challenge of the tournament for them was the size difference between JCCC and the other teams. 

“Just the size and physicality of all these teams,” Conrad explained. “You look at the top five or six teams here, we were the smallest team. They were big. All these teams were big and physical. That was our biggest thing. Just trying to survive being smaller.”

Smith thought that the biggest obstacle that the team had to overcome was physical injuries. 

“The biggest challenge for us was players being healthy,” Smith stated. “We had a lot of injuries throughout the team. I feel like that was really the main challenge that we had had. All of us sucked it up, came out here, and did what we [were] supposed to do to get the ‘ship.”

Overall Conrad’s favorite part of the season was teaching the game. Tonight’s win will most likely overshadow his love for teaching though.

“My favorite part is always in October when we are putting in the system in the teaching a lot,” Conrad said. “I really enjoy that. I think that’s the teacher in me, the educator. It’s a ton of just teaching the game, teaching our system. That’s my favorite but I’d say this is probably going to top that.”

Smith has loved this whole season. The biggest moment for her was tonight when she got to win the championship with a team she considers family.

“The whole season it’s just been very special for me,” Smith said. “I had a really good season with this team. We’ve all had a really good season with the team. I would say the biggest moment was tonight. Just enjoying the moment. Being with them, it’s really like a family for us. It was just very special to have this moment with us and the coaches. Very heartwarming for me.” 

The JCCC Cavaliers  are your 2025 NJCAA DII Women’s Basketball Champions, after going 34-1 this season. Their effort and hard work paid off and they got the title to show for it. 

The Cavaliers put their name under ‘Champions’ on the NJCAA bracket. (Photo by: Audrey Hook.)