The Bears have a new man at the top.

Jesse Agel, an assistant coach at Brown for the last two years and a 17-year assistant coach at Vermont, has been named the head men's basketball coach at Brown by Brown athletic director Michael Goldberger.

"I am absolutely delighted to have Jesse Agel as our head coach," said Goldberger. "Jesse brings a wealth of basketball knowledge and years of experience to the position. He has demonstrated that he knows what it takes to be successful at this level. Jesse views coaching to be about teaching, and that's something that Brown is all about and what I look for in all of our head coaches."

Brown didn't win the Ivy League last season, but it did make the College Basketball Invitational. Ohio of the Mid-American Conference edged Brown 80-74 with a 48-point outburst in the second half.

Damon Huffman scored 39 points and hit nine of the Bears' 16 3-pointers, helping to prop Brown's five-point bulge at halftime.

By closing out the regular season with a 78-62 win at Harvard and a 75-71 win at Dartmouth, Brown finished second in the Ivy League standings. That pushed the Bears into CBI consideration.

The loss to Ohio was temporarily deflating, but Brown is moving in the right direction.

Brown can point to a school-record 19 wins, 10 victories in its last 12 games and an 8-6 non-league regular-season record that includes road losses to three top-100 RPI teams -- Notre Dame, Baylor and Providence -- as signs of progress.

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