DAHLONEGA – For the fifth time in program history, the University of North Georgia (UNG) women's basketball team are champions of the Peach Belt Conference Tournament. The top-seeded Nighthawks defeated seventh-seeded Georgia Southwestern (GSW) 81-72 at Lynn Cottrell Arena at the UNG Convocation Center on Sunday in the 2025 PBC Women's Basketball Tournament Championship.

The No. 7 Nighthawks are now tied with Columbus State and Lander for the most PBC Tournament titles in conference history. UNG has earned all five of its league championships in the last eight seasons. 

Head coach Buffie Burson has checked off another goal for this season in what has already been one of the best years of her 31-year career. The sixth winningest active coach in NCAA Division II women's basketball has guided her team to a program record 29 wins through 31 games this year, a PBC Regular-Season Championship and now a PBC Tournament Championship.

Along the way, Burson's players earned three spots on the 2025 PBC All-Conference Team while graduate guard Caroline Martin was named the 2025 PBC Player of the Year. Burson herself was named the 2025 Coach of the Year for a conference-record fifth time.  

"I feel like the luckiest coach in the world to coach this team," Burson said after the win Sunday. "Winning any championship is hard. Beating a really good team three times is hard. Staying focused and finishing is hard. It's the hard that has made this season so special."

Three more accolades came rolling in on Sunday as Martin, graduate forward Emily Trushel and freshman guard Averie Jones were announced as members of the 2025 PBC All-Tournament Team. 

Martin led the Nighthawks in scoring in two of their three games in the tournament and averaged 16 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 4.7 steals while shooting 93.3 percent at the free-throw line.

Trushel was on triple-double watch in both of UNG's semifinal and championship matchups. She capped off the tournament with a game-high 26 points on 9-of-10 shooting from the floor and a 6-for-7 mark from deep while adding six rebounds and six assists. Trushel averaged 12.3 points, six rebounds and six assists while shooting 72.2 percent from the floor and a whopping 81.8 percent from three-point land. 

Jones was uniquely special in the first conference tournament of her career. She scored 19 points in the quarterfinal win over Clayton State and headlined the championship victory with seven made field goals, three of which came from downtown as she posted 20 points in total. Over her first three tournament games, Jones averaged 16 points, three rebounds, 2.3 assists while shooting 47.2 percent from the floor and 38.9 percent from beyond the arc.

On Sunday, it was an all-around team effort that led to UNG's emphatic win over the Hurricanes. All six Nighthawks that scored in the game recorded seven or more points as three reached double figures.

Following the aforementioned Trushel and Jones, senior guard Ansley Hall cemented her legacy as one of the best point guards in the country with another outstanding performance against GSW. 

In a game in which the Hurricanes trailed for almost the entirety, GSW hung around all day and put pressure on UNG forcing, the ball-handlers specifically, to make the right play. Hall seemed to always do just that as she put up 12 points on 4-of-8 shooting with a game-high nine assists. In 28 minutes, the Watkinsville, Ga. native turned the ball over just once.

Despite her lowest scoring output of the tournament with eight points, Martin provided an abundance of production on defense. She grabbed five rebounds in the game and recorded a career-high six steals to help lead her team to victory. She also distributed three assists and joined a quartet of players (Hall - 9, Trushel - 6, senior guard Carly Fahey - 4) to dish out three or more assists in the win. 

UNG's shared effort and camaraderie was perhaps no more present than in the assists column on Sunday. The Nighthawks tied a season-high with 26 assists, doing so on 29 made shots for an assist percentage of 89.7 percent. It's the third-highest assist percentage in a game in the NCAA Division-II era in program history (minimum 23 assists). 

"Can you believe a championship game with 26 assists on 29 made shots? That seriously sums up our season and team thus far," said Burson.

Despite holding a near double-digit lead for the majority of the third and fourth quarters, the result was not decided until the final minutes of the game as the Hurricanes would not let the Nighthawks pull away. 

GSW pulled as close as four points three different times in the fourth quarter, but time and again UNG came through with a much-need bucket, or steal or rebound. 

The two biggest plays of the final quarter came under two minutes with the Hurricanes lurking closely behind. With just a four-point lead, Hall drove to the paint and drew a help defender which left Emener wide open under the basket for a layup to put the Nighthawks up 77-71. 

On the ensuing GSW possession, 2025 PBC Tournament Most Valuable Player Ndidiamaka Ndukwe turned the ball over as he glanced off her hip and out of bounds. With 1:16 to play in a two-possession game, the Hurricanes were forced into a tough decision. Foul the Nighthawks and send the best free-throw shooting team in the league to the charity stripe or try to force one stop on defense and hold the deficit to six points.  

The Hurricanes chose the latter and Emener made them pay as she sunk an eight-foot jumper on an assist from Jones as the shot clock expired to put UNG ahead 79-71 with 47 seconds to play and all but seal the victory. Despite making only one of her first six shot attempts in the game thus far, Emener sank the deciding buckets on back-to-back possessions to lift her team to the championship.

She did so because her teammates trusted her. They trusted her because they have all season. 

"Trust, joy, hard work, selflessness, sacrifice." These are all words that UNG's players and coaches have used to describe this season and the members of this program. They aren't just buzzwords to be written on a wall. They are actionable traits and descriptors of how this team feels about itself and how its players feel about each other. These are not just things they say, but things they do. Because when it comes to the Nighthawks, well done is greater than well said.