Photos by Associated Press

Washington-St. Louis men's basketball players celebrate winning their second straight Division III championship game on Saturday.

The NCAA Division III men's basketball final four wrapped up Saturday afternoon. For the second straight year, there was bunch of dancing Bears going wild at the end.

Paced by forward Tyler Nading's 20 points and guard Sean Wallis' 16 points and 10 assists, Washington-St. Louis became only the fourth school ever to win back-to-back national men's hoops titles with a methodical 61-52 triumph over Richard Stockton.

"It's great to be back in the city of Salem, and it's even greater to walk out with a championship again," Bears coach Mark Edwards said after his team celebrated with their excited students and fans on a confetti-laced civic center floor.

Washington joined Wisconsin-Stevens Point (2004-05), Wisconsin-Plattesville (1998-99) and North Park (1978-80) as the only schools that have won consecutive national crowns. Edwards, who needed 27 years to win his first national title and only one more to snare a second one, was asked if the Midwest power is on the precipice of dynasty status.

"I don't know that that's a dynasty," said Edwards with a chuckle. "But if they invite us back [next year], we'll come."

Twenty-two hours after dispatching Guilford in the semifinals with a dazzling outside shooting display that produced 13 3-pointers, this one was an inside job by Edwards' well-schooled squad. The Bears (29-2) outscored the Ospreys 36-14 in the paint and won the rebounding battle, 41-29. Nading, a 6-foot-4 senior, repeatedly got lost down low and scored all but one of his nine field goals from point-blank range.

"Their aggressiveness made them susceptible to me just leaking to the basket," said Nading, referring to the Ospreys' quick, overplaying small defenders. "I think Sean probably had 10 assists to me right under the basket. My teammates did a great of finding me there, and, seriously you guys can all make layups, right? It wasn't that hard."

Well, it was hard on Stockton. Longtime Ospreys coach Gerry Matthews couldn't help but get a headache watching Nading, mostly off pinpoint feeds from Wallis, conducting a veritable layup drill for much of the game's final 30 minutes. The loss ended the New Jersey Athletic Conference champion's 18-game winning streak and ended its season at 30-3.

"I'd like to see the tape a couple of times and try to figure out why [No.] 21 was open so much at parts of the second half," said Matthews of Nading. "They're the best we had seen on tape and just as tough to play live.

"They're well coached, they run they run their stuff and they score off the pass, they score off the back screen, they score off the juke. To try and defend their sets in 15 hours [preparation time] ... we could have walked through that crap the next five days ... and we'd still been [upset] on the sideline. Poise is still the name of the game, and that's why they've won it two years in a row."

To pull off the upset, the Ospreys would have needed not only to defend the paint a lot better but also find the hoop on offense. Stockton hit only 6-of-30 field-goal attempts in the first half and finished 19-for-60 (31.7 percent). Washington led 29-16 at halftime and held a double-digit margin the rest of the way, except when Stockton crept to 49-41 with 7:35 left. A couple of layups and two free throws later, the Bears were back up by 14 and totally out of harm's way.

Guard Santini Lancioni, whose 19 points led Stockton, missed 15 of his 21 shots.

Jerome Hubbard, the Ospreys' second-leading scorer, was a horrid 2-for-16 from the field, including 1-for-13 from 3-point range.

"I just told these guys that I couldn't have picked a worse day in my life to have a shooting game like that," Hubbard said.

"It just wasn't my weekend. It hurts."

There was no pain on the other side.

Wallis, who named the event's most outstanding player, missed last year's title run after he broke a leg and torn his MCL in the third game of the season.

"It's unbelievable," Wallis said. "I told Aaron [Thompson, teammate] that I'll always remember when they were handing out the national championship watches last year. And Aaron came up to me on the bench and said, 'we're going to get another one for you next year.' It's a dream come true."

Third-place game

Guilford defeated Franklin & Marshall 79-67 in Saturday's third-place game.

WASHINGTON U. (29-2)

Smith 4-8 0-0 8, Wallis 5-8 4-4 16, Nading 9-11 2-2 20, Thompson 2-12 0-0 4, Kelly 1-4 1-2 3, Kelley 0 0-0 0, Wolf 0 0-0 0, Greenberg 0-0 0-0 0, Knepper 3-6 0-0 8, Toth 0-1 2-2 4, Totals 24-50 9-10 61.

RICHARD STOCKTON (30-3)

Smith 2-6 0-0 4, Davis 2-2 0-0 4, Lancioni 6-21 4-4 19, Massaquoi 2-7 3-4 8, Hubbard 2-16 0-0 5, Wilson 1-1 0-0 3, Farrow 4-6 1-3 9, Simko 0 0-0 0, Pendleton 0 0-0 0, Purdy 0 0-0 0, Scheck 0 0-0 0, Horsch 0-0 0-0 0, Totals 19-60 8-11 52.

Halftime -- 29-16, Washington U. 3-point goals --Washington U. 4-19 (Thompson 0-8, Wallis 2-4, Knepper 2-4, Smith 0-3), Richard Stockton 6-28 (Lancioni 3-11, Hubbard 1-13, Massaquoi 1-1, Wilson 1-1, Farrow 0-1, Pendleton 0-1). Rebounds -- Washington U. 41 (Smith 8, Nading 8), Richard Stockton 29 (Farrow 7). Assists -- Washington U. 16 (Wallis 10), Richard Stockton 6 (Lancioni 4). Turnovers -- Washington U. 15 (Thompson 4), Richard Stockton 11 (Hubbard 3). Blocks -- Washington U. 2 (Nading 1, Knepper 1), Richard Stockton 2 (Davis 1, Massaquoi 1). Steals -- Washington U. 4 (Smith 3), Richard Stockton 5 (Davis 2). A -- 2,263.