There’s two seconds to go in the game. Yale is down one but has the ball. Needing to put up a shot, the ball-handler passes to his teammate who shoots the ball. The buzzer sounds. The shot goes in.
This is the drama that concluded the Ivy League Tournament final. Yale won. Brown was the loser.
Brown was so close. It could have possibly put the game away by making more free throws. Of course, it is really disappointing that it lost the game by giving up a wide-open shot near the basket.
Brown nearly won the game, and the conference tournament. By winning, the Bears would have made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1986.
As we get ready to bet on college basketball during March Madness, let’s take a look at the sad and miserable program.
FINAL: Yale 62, Brown 61
Bulldogs win it at the buzzer, closing the game on an 8-1 run
— Brown Men’s Basketball (@BrownU_MBB) March 17, 2024
The Drought
Brown has two NCAA Tournament appearances in its history; the first one took place in 1939, while the second one took place 47 years later, in 1986.
This year will be the 38th in a row in which the Bears have failed to make the NCAA Tournament. That is a long time: to be exact, the Bears have the tenth-longest active NCAA Tournament drought.
Recent History
The Bears haven’t been complete failures. They did make an NIT appearance in 2003: in 2008 and 2019, they made it into the CBI. Brown also played in the CIT in 2014.
Of all these recent lower-level tournament appearances, Brown has one win, which came in the CBI in 2019.
On The Way Up?
Over the years, things have looked really bad for Brown. In 2016, for example, this team finished 8-20.
2019 and 2020 were winning seasons for the team, which finished with 20 wins in 2019.
This year represented a step downward in the sense that Brown finished with a losing record, 13-18, after going 14-13 last season.
Brown Got Hot
But Brown got hot at the right time, helping it become a real threat to win its conference tournament. They ended their regular season by winning six straight games.
They had to play one conference tournament game, against a tough Princeton team, before they faced Yale in the final.
Despite Yale being a tough team, tough enough to beat current 14 seed Colgate by 18 points on a neutral floor, the Bears were two seconds away from winning that game and securing an NCAA Tournament bid.
What Makes Brown A Threat
Brown is a threat because it lives and dies by the three-pointer. The Bears attempt threes at the nation’s 94th-highest rate. They do not have any very big players, instead opting to play guys who are versatile.
Their center, for example, is all of 6-8 and 220 pounds. He shoots a lot of threes. Brown has bigs and guards who shoot the three, giving them various options to rely on getting hot in a given game. Point guard Kino Lilly is typically their top option. He shoots 43.5% from deep.
But Brown got hot because it could rely on other players as well. When the Bears upset Yale at the end of the regular season, they made ten of their 25 three-point attempts, with players not named Lilly responsible for seven of them.
Brown Can Also Score Inside
But three-pointers aren’t exactly everything for Brown. When the Bears upset Princeton in their first conference tournament game this year, they scored 90 points primarily by thriving inside. This ability to score inside speaks to the intricacy of its offense.
When watching Brown, you’ll notice a dizzying amount of off-ball movement with which Brown players aim to gain an edge on their defender in order to have a better chance of making a shot when they receive a pass.
The Bears love to set screens for players without the ball. These screens help free up Brown players for three-pointers and indeed also for shots at the basket.
Cynics will call this basketball a kind of running in circles. While Brown players literally do run in circles, there is so much movement that other players are also going in different directions. As a result, a Brown ball-handler will often have multiple options to pass to.
The Bears have ball-handlers who are comfortable withstanding defensive pressure, allowing them to respond even to double-teams by finding an open target.
Noooo way! From historical upset to deadly buzzer beater. Yale wins 62-61 with a last second basket. Crazy finish, Brown covers the +7 spread but what a bad beat for ML ticket holders. 38 years and counting… #MarchMadness #MarchMadness2024 https://t.co/Fczn8IWL4g
— Marco (@marco_bmr) March 17, 2024
Forecast
Not all of Brown’s wins are high-scoring ones. This team is, for example, one of the better ones in its conference at limiting three-point efficiency.
This is a team that can build on its quality on both offense and defense. On its roster, three are seniors while nine are Juniors or younger.
