WHITEWATER, Wis. — Lance Leipold, the football coach at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, thought briefly about buying a Powerball ticket this week but changed his mind.

“I thought maybe we had used up all of our luck,” Leipold said.

But luck has little to do with what is going on at Whitewater, an N.C.A.A. Division III powerhouse in south-central Wisconsin.

In only 151 days, the Warhawks did something no university in N.C.A.A. history had accomplished: win national championships in football, men’s basketball and baseball in one school year.

With 245 Division III teams competing in football, 378 in baseball and 417 in basketball, the odds of that trifecta were 1 in 38,618,370.