{"id":32815,"date":"2026-03-14T21:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T01:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2026\/03\/15\/knights-win-first-ever-national-championship\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T14:46:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T18:46:47","slug":"knights-win-first-ever-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2026\/03\/14\/knights-win-first-ever-national-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Knights Win First-Ever National Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/Team-with-trophy-e1773538113448.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-29888 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2026\/03\/Team-with-trophy.png\" alt=\"team poses together with championship trophy, many hold up their fingers to indicate number 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"784\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Herkimer, NY (March 14, 2026) \u2014 The Northern Essex Community College men&#8217;s basketball team has made history: they are the first college athletic team to win a national title. The Knights defeated Dallas Richland College (Dallas, TX) 68-62 Saturday night to claim the NJCAA DIII National Championship. The win was also a program-record-tying 33rd win of the season.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_29886\" style=\"width: 309px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2026\/03\/Darren-Gatorade.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29886\" class=\" wp-image-29886\" src=\"http:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2026\/03\/Darren-Gatorade.jpg\" alt=\"darren stratton talks to a player as two players sneak up behind him with a Gatorade bucket\" width=\"299\" height=\"389\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-29886\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Head coach Darren Stratton celebrates takes a Gatorade bath<\/p><\/div>\n<p>NECC got off to a hot start and jumped out to a 17-9 lead in the opening minutes before a brief cold shooting streak allowed Richland to tie the game at 17, and it remained a one-possession contest for the remainder of the half, with the Knights trailing at halftime 30-28.<\/p>\n<p>Until the final two minutes of the half, when the Knights began to extend the advantage, neither team led by more than 5 at any point in the second half.<\/p>\n<p>With the game tied at 50, a Yunosuke Matsuda (Tokyo, JP) layup gave the Knights a 52-50 lead with 4:58 remaining, and following a defensive stop, Cristian Moscat (Lawrence) three-point basket gave the NECC a five-point advantage.<\/p>\n<p>Alejandro Delgado (Haverhill) scored a game high 16 points along with eight rebounds as he was named to the All-Tournament team, as he led a trio of scorers in double figures. National Tournament MVP Alex Johnson (Worcester) followed up his 39-point performance in the semi-final with 12 points, and Jay\u2019von Depina (Brockton) added 12 points off the bench and was named the tournament&#8217;s Small Man of the Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Christian Sanders (Boston) was also named to the All-Tournament team and finished the championship game with eight points and eight rebounds.<\/p>\n<p>Head coach Darren Stratton was named Coach of the Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The Knights had already made history leading up to the National Tournament. They were the first college team to earn a No. 1 seed in a postseason tournament. And, with their earlier NJCAA Region 21\/East District Championship win, they tied the Region 21 and New England record for consecutive men\u2019s basketball championships.<\/p>\n<p>Read more about the Knights&#8217; historic season and learn more about the team by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.neccknights.com\/landing\/index\">visiting the website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Herkimer, NY (March 14, 2026) \u2014 The Northern Essex Community College men&#8217;s basketball team has made history: they are the first college athletic team to win a national title. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":32808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[758,681,757],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headline","category-mobile","category-students-alumni"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Knights Win First-Ever National Championship - NECC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Northern Essex Community College men&#039;s basketball team has made history: they are the first college athletic team to win a national title.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2026\/03\/14\/knights-win-first-ever-national-championship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Knights Win First-Ever National Championship - 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