INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- The nationally-ranked Christopher Newport women's basketball team will head to Lexington, Va. for the opening weekend of the NCAA Division III Championship as the Captains (23-4) will take on the Centennial Conference Champions from Gettysburg College (21-6) on Friday. The host will be Washington and Lee University who will face off against St. Mary's (Md.) in the other first round matchup. 
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The games will be played at Holekamp Gym on the WLU campus. Game times, ticket information, and more information about game coverage will be available here when it is announced by the host site. The winners of Friday's first round games will advance to play in the second round on Saturday.

The Captains, who won a program record seventh consecutive conference championship in the Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Tournament this weekend and earned the league's automatic berth, will be appearing in the NCAA Tournament for the 26th time. CNU, making the team's 10th straight postseason appearance, is one of only three teams (Wisconsin-Whitewater and Scranton) to appear in every NCAA Tournament since 2016. 

Gettysburg picked up their fifth straight Centennial Conference Championship by defeating No. 3 Johns Hopkins on their home floor, 68-59. It is the 13th all-time appearance in the postseason event for the Bullets including eight straight heading into Friday's bout with the Captains. 

CNU ranks fifth all-time in NCAA Tournament appearances and boasts the second longest active streak behind Scranton's 13-year run. This season, the Captains are 23-4 after capturing the seventh consecutive conference crown with a 73-57 win over Salisbury. Against Gettysburg, CNU is 4-0 with the most recent game coming on November 12, 2021 on a neutral floor in Baltimore. It will be the second time the two teams match up in the NCAA Tournament after CNU captured an 82-78 win during the 2019 opening round on the road. 

This season, the Captains have been led by Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year Madison McKenzie with 12.5 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game. She was named the Conference Tournament MVP after scoring 39 points in two games in the postseason tournament. Christopher Newport has also been led by seniors McKenna Snively and Hailey Kellogg this season as the veteran tandem have accumulated 107 victories in their tenure. Snively is pouring in a career-high 9.9 points per game while Kellogg has dished a career-high 97 assists. 

Gettysburg is one of the top defensive teams in the nation ranking ninth nationally in field-goal percentage defense (.323) while holding opponents to just 55.0 points per game. The Bullets are led by Kimberly Hopkins with 9.0 points per game and 4.1 rebounds per game as the Gettysburg offense is well-balanced like the Captains' unit.  Eight different Gettysburg players are averaging at least 5.0 points per gamet his season. 

All four teams playing in the opening weekend pod won their respective conference championships. The host Generals (28-0) won the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and will host head coach Brittany Kemp's former team, the Seahawks of St. Mary's (Md.). St. Mary's captured the2026 United East conference championship and is 23-5 overall this season.