By Gordon Mann, D3sports

Let’s get something out of the way first.

Thomas More did not win the 2015 NCAA Division III women’s basketball national championship just because the Saints had Sydney Moss.  As several players and coaches, at Thomas More and elsewhere, were quick to point out all season, the Saints were a really good basketball team. They had depth in the front court, senior leadership in the backcourt and a fearless freshman dynamo at point guard. Thomas More was much more than Moss.

All that said, Sydney Moss may have completed the single greatest season of any women’s Division III basketball player ever. Heck, it may have been the single greatest season of any Division III basketball player, man or woman.

Consider the accolades and achievements:

• Moss was the consensus player of the year, receiving that award from the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and D3hoops.com. She's the first player to do that in consecutive seasons.
• Moss led the nation in scoring at 24.2 points per game and broke the Division III NCAA Tournament scoring record with 197 points in six games. The Division III women’s tournament hasn’t always had 64 teams. When the tournament had 32 teams or first round byes, players might only have a maximum of five games. But no worries. Moss broke the record by the end of her fifth game anyway.
• Moss led her team to an undefeated record and a national championship. In the title game, she posted a triple-double against George Fox, which was also undefeated.

So was that the greatest season ever by a Division III women’s basketball player?

And the award goes to...

NCAA Division III women’s basketball dates back to 1982 so there’s 34 years’ worth of history to sort through. We can pore over individual and team statistics (and we will), but we’ll be evaluating players’ performance from our perspective right now. Is Moss’ 24 points per game more or less impressive than, say, the 31 points per game that Jeannie Demers scored for Buena Vista 31 years ago? Very few people reading this article saw Demers play or even know who she is, so it’s tough to say.

Let’s look at the list of major award winners to see how the people who coached and covered the game viewed players’ accomplishments each year, as they occurred.

• List of major award winners for Women's Division III basketball

WBCA named its first Division III player of the year in 1983, and it continues to do so today. We named our first All-American team in 1998 and added a Player of the Year award in 2006. The NCAA has selected an All-Tournament team every year since 1982 and a Most Outstanding Player of the Tournament in most years. The Most Outstanding Player doesn’t always go to someone from the national champion, but it has every year since 1984.

Alia Fischer played a huge part in Wash U.'s run of four consecutive national titles.

If we want to compare Moss’ season to other great ones, this is a good place to start. How many players won the WBCA Player of the Year and were named the Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in a season where their team won the national championship? Before this season, it only happened three times.

• Alia Fischer did it with Washington U. in 2000
• Fischer's teammate Tasha Rodgers did it in 2001
• Current Howard Payne coach Meia Daniels did it as a player for the Yellow Jackets in 2008.

We also can't hold it against the players who won the WBCA Player of the Year and a national championship in seasons where the NCAA didn’t name a Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.  For whatever reason, that award was not given out from 1985 through 1996 or in 1999. The NCAA did still have All-Tournament teams in those seasons, so let's use that as a substitute and expand our list by four.

• Former Scranton coach Deanna (Kyle) Klingman did it as a player for the Royals in 1985.
• Laura Schmelzer did it with Capital in 1994 during the Crusaders’ back-to-back championship seasons.
• Wendy Wangerin did it with UW-Oshkosh in 1996 when the Titans went undefeated.
• Fischer did it again with undefeated Washington U. in 1999.

So we’ve got eight elite seasons where a player swept the major awards and won a national championship. Two other players came really close. In 1982, which was the first season of NCAA Division III women’s basketball, Bev Hall led Elizabethtown to the national championship and was named the Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. But there was no player of the year award at that time, so it's hard to gauge her regular season excellence.

More recently Olivia Lett led Illinois Wesleyan to the national title in 2012 and received tournament Most Outstanding Player honors. But she split the player of the year awards with Caroline Stedman of Amherst. Undoubtedly there are other fantastic seasons that aren't on our list and we invite you to tell us what we missed in the comments.

Later this week we'll focus on these elite eight seasons with a closer look at how they stack up statistically.