On March 15 and 16, Ivy Madness — the Ivy League’s basketball playoffs — is coming to the Pizzitola Sports Center for the first time in the tournament’s history. But it remains to be seen whether either of Brown’s basketball teams will be playing on home court.

With three games to go in the regular season, the Bears are still trying to earn a top four position in Ivy standings. The men (13-11, 5-6 Ivy) sit in fifth place after breaking their three-game win streak this Saturday night in a crushing loss to Cornell at the Pizz. The women’s team (10-14, 4-7 Ivy) competed at home as well this weekend and suffered a similarly down-to-the-wire defeat against Harvard. The women now sit in fifth place. Only the top four teams in the regular season standings will advance to the postseason.

But neither team’s hopes are over. The men will travel to Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend. Though the match-up against second-ranked Dartmouth will be tough to win, Friday’s contest against Harvard, who have the same number of Ivy victories as Brown, is a must-win situation for the Bears.

The women are also on the road, facing Columbia and Cornell. Columbia leads the Ivy League with ten victories, but the game against sixth place Cornell should give the Bears an excellent opportunity to collect another win and make up ground in the standings.

The Herald’s Data Desk has built an interactive tool to explore the standings scenarios based on the outcomes of the final 12 games across both the men’s and the women’s teams. Those interested in the Ivy League’s tiebreakers can read more here.

The women’s team, who have not qualified for Ivy Madness since the first tournament in 2017, are looking to flip the narrative this year. Following Saturday’s loss, the women are on a five-game losing streak and have only one more chance to avoid a winless February. Still, the team’s early season success has shown that they are capable of playing at a high level.

In late January, Bruno went on a three-game win streak, defeating Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. The win against Penn was especially crucial, as the Quakers now hold the elusive fourth spot in Ivy standings. Columbia, Harvard and Princeton have already clinched the top three seeds in the tournament, so in order to make the postseason, Brown will have to surpass Penn.

Fortunately for Brown, there is still hope. Though the Bears face number one seeded Columbia first, their next two opponents, Cornell and Yale, rest near the bottom of Ivy standings. For the talented Brown roster, a 2-1 record is more than reasonable and if the team can revive their January prowess, even a 3-0 record is within reach.

Still, no matter how many games Brown wins, they will need help from Penn. Currently, Penn has one more Ivy victory than the Bears, and so to have a chance, Brown must win more of the remaining three games than the Quakers. For their part, Penn will face off against Dartmouth, currently a 2-win team, as well as Harvard and Princeton, who sit in second and third place in the Ivy with 9 wins each.

In a scenario in which all games are won by the team with a better Ivy record, Brown would go 2-1, beating Cornell and Yale, while Penn would go 1-2, beating only Dartmouth. That would put Penn ahead of Brown by the third tiebreaker using the NCAA NET ranking, since the teams would have an even head-to-head record (the first tiebreaker) and identical records against every other Ivy team (the second tiebreaker). However, NET rankings are updated by the NCAA after every game. Penn currently outranks Brown by just 12 places, 166 to 179, so Brown could conceivably gain the advantage on the NET ranking tiebreaker by season’s end.

Of course, all of this is moot if Brown defeats Columbia, or if Brown fails to do that and Penn defeats either Harvard or Princeton. You can explore all the other ways the standings might shake out with the interactive tool below.

The men’s team has had a similarly varied season. After a disappointing 2-5 start to Ivy play, Brown secured a signature double-digit win over Princeton. Following the Princeton win, the team won two more games to bring their record to 5-5 and secure fourth place in the standings, winning the head-to-head tiebreaker over fifth place Cornell. Unfortunately for the Bears, their Saturday loss to Cornell not only dropped them out of Ivy Madness contention for the moment, but it also turned that critical tiebreaker into a draw.

Looking forward, the men’s team has a difficult path to the top four. Their next two games against Harvard and Dartmouth are winnable, even if Brown dropped their first game against each team. Brown’s final home game of the season is against a formidable and currently undefeated Yale team. If Brown wins these three games, they are effectively guaranteed to qualify for Ivy Madness. But given the difficulty of their schedule, Brown would be lucky to go 2-1 — then, they would need help.

If Brown beats Dartmouth and Harvard while facing a tie in the final standings, they will have an even head-to-head tiebreaker with every team in contention for the final three spots. That would trigger the second tiebreaker, which is the best record against the highest-ranked non-tied team. That’s one reason why a win over Yale would be incredibly valuable. Because there are many more teams in contention than on the women’s side, tiebreakers get more complex and many multi-team tie scenarios are possible — you can explore all those possibilities in the interactive tool below. The overall outlook is that Brown will probably need one of the bottom-feeders of Ivy basketball to knock off one of Brown’s competitors. Penn and Columbia each play both Cornell and Princeton, and if even one of those games is an upset, Brown’s path to the playoffs becomes more promising.

For the Brown men’s team, the season is likely to come down to the final game against Yale. Win, and they’re probably in. Lose, and the team is more likely than not left haunted by their last-second January loss to Dartmouth and their Feb. 8 collapse in the final minutes against Columbia. Will the team be left asking “what if?” or will they have a chance to redeem their painful loss to Yale in last year’s Ivy Madness? We can only wait and see.

And play out all the scenarios on this site, of course.

Select the results of the remaining games to project the final standings: