Toughness.
For the last dozen years, the Mike Martin-led Brown Bears haven’t been known for playing the most aesthetic style of basketball, but their toughness, along with an out-of-this-world team shooting performance, led by junior guard Kino Lilly, propelled the Brown Bears’ unlikely Ivy League Championship semifinals victory over top-seed Princeton, winning 90-to-81, extending their winning streak to seven games.
The Bears’ effort was led by its pair of All-Ivy talents: First Team All-Ivy Selection Kino Lilly matched a season-high 27 points (6-for-8 from two; 3-7 from three, 6-8 from the line) and dished out a career-high ten assists. Second Team All-Ivy Selection Nana Owusu-Anane stuffed the stat-sheet, scoring 19 points, grabbing a season-high fifteen boards, adding four assists and a pair of steals and blocks.
The typically smooth-shooting Princeton Tigers converted just a quarter of their 35 three-point attempts, contrasted by Brown’s ultra-efficient 56% from the field with a whopping 73% of their field goals assisted.
Saving his best game of the season for today, sophomore guard Alexander Lesburt made just his eighth career start, scoring 15 points and most impressively playing a key role in bottling up Princeton star guard Xaivian Lee, who struggled offensively throughout the game and finished with just six points on 2-of-8 shooting, which is his lowest scoring total against D1 opponents this season. An infrequently used bench piece for most of his career, Lesburt has stepped in admirably for senior guard Felix Kloman.
Starting the season 6-17, no one outside the program expected the Brown Bears to be in this position, but closing out their regular season with a six-game winning streak clinched their opportunity to supplant Harvard, Columbia and Penn as the fourth and final seed in Ivy Madness.
Madness ensued today and on Sunday, Brown will face the Yale, a team that the Bears beat in overtime on Yale's home court last Saturday. The Bears will, once again, be underdogs, but no one can deny that they are the hottest team in the Ivy League.
The Ivy Championship will be played on Sunday at noon at Levien Gymnasium, the home of Columbia University's basketball teams, and be aired on ESPN2.
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