Pizzitola Sports Center

Brown falls to 4-3 with 20-point home loss to Navy

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Brandon Anderson returned to the lineup for Brown on Saturday afternoon, but his team-high 19 points weren’t enough as the Bears dropped a 76-56 decision to Navy at the Pizzitola Sports Center.

The first half, a back-and-forth affair with seven lead changes, ended with the Midshipmen on top, 27-26.  Both teams struggled from the field, with Navy shooting 29% and Brown (4-3) hitting 37%. The Midshipmen (4-3) found success at getting to the free throw line, getting 13 chances compared to Brown’s three but only converting on six of those opportunities.

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Brown men’s basketball releases 2019-2020 schedule

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On Thursday, Brown coach Mike Martin announced the Bears 2019-2020 schedule.  The 13-game nonconference schedule is highlighted by a visit to Cameron Indoor Stadium to visit Duke on Dec. 28.  The team will also visit St. John’s, while welcoming in-state rival Rhode Island to the Pizzitola Sports Center for the first time since a 88-85 overtime loss in 2016.

The conference schedule begins at defending champion Yale on Friday, January 17, followed by five straight games at home against Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and Harvard.  The Bears then hit the road for six of their last eight, including four in a row against Penn, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell.  Bruno welcomes the Tigers on February 28, followed by a senior night contest against the Quakers.  The regular season concludes with a match against regular season favorites Harvard and a visit to Leede Arena to take on Dartmouth on March 7.

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Brown’s men’s basketball’s future is less clear than expected, but there’s still reason for optimism

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Mar. 20, 2019: a sparse but committed crowd enters the Pizzitola Sports Center as Brown men’s basketball hosts a playoff game, its first in five years. Hosting the UAB Blazers, the event is part of the College Basketball Invitational, a minor national tournament. The event is meant to mark the end of a historic season for Brown. Though it ended in disappointment, the regular season yielded 19 wins, tied a program record, so the event should be fun and happy.

But the atmosphere is muted because the situation is more complicated than that.

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Brown bows out of CBI with 81-63 loss at Loyola Marymount

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Brown couldn’t extend its historic 2018-19 season with another win at Loyola Marymount, fading quickly in the second half en route to an 81-63 defeat in Los Angeles.

The loss dropped the Bears to 20-12 on the season, after Bruno already set a single-season record for wins and won a postseason tournament game for the first time in school history by topping UAB at the Pizzitola Sports Center Wednesday.

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Brown defeats UAB, 83-78, in CBI first round for Bears’ first postseason tournament win ever

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Eighty years after Brown’s appearance in the first ever NCAA Tournament, the Bears won their first postseason tournament game Wednesday night, also setting a program record for wins in a single season.

Brown defeated UAB, 83-78, at the Pizzitola Sports Center in the first round of the CBI, with senior guard and Ivy Defensive Player of the Year Obi Okolie extending his collegiate career at least one more game with a career-high 26 points on the strength of 7-for-14 shooting from three-point range.

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Ivy League announces conference tournament rotation schedule through 2025

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On Wednesday, the Ivy League office announced that Harvard will host the 2020 Ivy League Tournaments on Sat., Mar. 14 and Sun. Mar. 15. In addition, the league also scheduled the tournament locations through the 2024-25 season, with each of the conference’s schools that haven’t already hosted getting a turn.

After holding the first two Ivy tournaments at Penn’s Palestra (seating 8,722) and scheduling this year’s event at Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheater (2,800), the league has elected to follow a southern-central-northern pattern for future sites.  After Harvard’s Lavietes Pavilion (1,636), Ivy Madness will travel down south to Princeton’s Jadwin Gymnasium (6,854) in 2021, followed by trips to Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center (2,800) in 2022 and Cornell’s Newman Arena (4,473) in 2023.  The event will move to the northern-most site at Dartmouth’s Leede Arena (2,100) in 2024, before finishing the rotation at Columbia’s Levien Gymnasium (2,700) in the spring of 2025.

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Ivy hoops weekend takeaways – Jan. 18-19, 2019

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Women’s

Brown’s offense is too potent to miss Ivy League Tournament again 

If Brown misses the Ivy League Tournament for a second straight season with as much offensive firepower as it has, it’ll really be a shame.

Brown senior guard Shayna Mehta’s career-high 37 points led the way, and the Bears’ elder Mehta has been one of the league’s standout scorers for a long time now, going back to her Ivy Rookie of the Year campaign in 2015-16.

But Mehta wasn’t alone in gouging a strong Yale defense in the Bears’ 86-71 win over the Bulldogs Friday. Seniors Erika Steeves and Taylor Will, who missed Ivy play last season due to injury, and junior Justine Gaziano combined for 43 points on 18-for-34 shooting. The Bears overwhelmed Yale inside and out, topping Yale by double digits at Pizzitola Sports Center while scoring 80-plus points for the second straight season.

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Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 9-10, 2018

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Some unexpected contributors carried their teams on their backs this weekend, yielding varied results.

In Harvard’s 66-51 win over Princeton Friday night, the Crimson offense flowed through sophomore guard Christian Juzang, who posted 20 points – 12 more than his career high up to that point – on 6-for-10 shooting alongside four assists. Columbia rookie guard Gabe Stefanini notched a career-high 20 points in just 27 minutes in the Lions’ wild overtime loss at Brown Saturday night, 17 of them coming in the second half or extra period. After scoring just 26 points in the previous five games, Yale freshman guard Azar Swain registered 25 this weekend, his 7-for-12 (58.3 percent) clip from deep lifting an Elis squad that had been hurting from three-point range.

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Ivy Power Poll – Jan. 28, 2018

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1. Penn (13-6, 3-0 Ivy)

After Penn let Temple slip away at the Palestra last weekend, it got Big 5 revenge Saturday with a 67-56 win over St. Joseph’s, displaying a stout defense that had Steve Donahue singing its praises after the game.

“The story of our team, and our season, is our defense,” Donahue said according to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “Playing two bigs, with the defensive numbers we have right now … we’re way different than last year, and way ahead.”

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Brown men’s basketball revamps its roster for a challenging 2017-18 season

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Last season, the Brown men’s basketball team went 9-7 in nonconference action.  The nine wins tied the program’s record for non-league victories with the 2001-02 and 2014-15 teams.  The Bears’ 8-0 start at home was the best beginning since the 1934-35 squad. In league play, Brown appeared to get a boost of confidence from its nonconference schedule, dominating Penn and Cornell on the road and losing by one at home to Yale. With a 2-3 start in Ivy competition, the Bears were looking good for the fourth spot in the inaugural Ivy Tournament.  

Unfortunately, Brown lost its next five matches, derailing its hopes for an upper division finish. Despite beating Dartmouth on the road to start the next to last weekend of the season, the loss to Harvard the following evening eliminated the Bears from postseason play.  The team did bounce back in its penultimate game, beating Columbia by 20 and damaging the Lions’ hope for the league’s final four. A Senior Night loss to Cornell left the Bears with a 4-10 record (13-17 overall), tied for sixth in the Ancient Eight.

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