As Mike Daly surveys the national landscape in Division I men’s lacrosse this season, he’s struck by the narrow differences between most of the teams in the hunt for the NCAA tournament.

He doesn’t have to look much further than his own Brown program for evidence.

The Bears beat Villanova by a goal. They lost to Harvard by a goal. They were tied with North Carolina with five minutes to go.

And, after falling 17-9 to Princeton in what was a two-goal game at halftime, Brown added another exhibit — a 12-10 triumph at Penn to give a jolt to their postseason hopes.

“It really feels like a couple plays either way any day can make the difference,” Daly said. “The last couple weeks, we hadn’t felt like we were that far off, frankly. I’m just happy for our seniors who never lost focus, never lost the work ethic and never quit on anything and kept our team moving in the right direction. We were in position to make two or three more plays. That’s it.”

The Bears (6-4, 1-2 Ivy) are intriguing for a few reasons. Even if they almost fell back to .500 with a three-game slide, they still have opportunities to distinguish themselves. They face Yale on Saturday at home and visit Cornell next week. The possibility of reaching the Ivy League tournament remains as well.

And despite playing just one game last season, Brown is still a relatively old team. Of the 100 starts scattered throughout the first 10 contests, 79 were earned by seniors or graduate students.

Arguably the most productive player at the offensive end, though, is junior Devon McLane. He scored four times at Penn to bump his season total to a team-best 31. He also leads the Bears with 17 assists.

Like plenty of third-year players in the Ivy League, McLane barely had any college experience entering the year — one game as a freshman before the 2020 season was canceled, then the one game the Bears squeezed in last year.

“It’s always great when your hardest workers are your best players,” Daly said. “Nobody shoots more than Devon. Nobody watches more film than Devon. It’s great to see that rewarded. He’d be the first guy to tell you that teammates around him and teammates getting him the ball and teammates creating situations that put him in advantageous situations are all part of it.”

The defeat of Penn also provides some hope Brown is doing what coaches hope happens every year: Peaking toward the end of a season. If the Bears can get on a late roll, the strong overall profile of the Ivy League this season will enhance Brown’s chances of landing an NCAA tournament berth for the first time since 2016.

“Certainly the best part of Saturday was just getting back to kind of our core fundamentals and core beliefs, and to have that rewarded with a win and reinforced — we do these couple of small things and we have success,” Daly said. “We’re not exactly where we want to be, but I certainly feel like we’re in a good place to build off that from Saturday.”