BC’s Men’s Basketball Team Heads to ECAC Semi-Finals

3/10/2008

After their best season in nearly 60 years, and a win on Wednesday night against Rutgers-Newark, the Brooklyn College men's basketball team will be advancing to the semi-final round of the Eastern College Athletic Conference's Metro Championship tournament.

Sophomore Guard Thomas Guerin and Coach Podias

The Bridges overcame a 13 point halftime deficit to win 87-79 in the Roosevelt gymnasium. Sophomore forward Richard Jean-Baptiste led all scorers with a career-high of 37 points.

This Saturday, they will take on Stevens Tech in Hoboken, N.J. for the semi-final round. The game will tip-off at 8:00 pm in the Schaefer Athletic Center. Admission is $3.00 and tickets will be available at the door prior to the game.

The Bridges finished the regular season 20-5 and lost a heartbreaker to the New York City College of Technology in the CUNYAC postseason tournament last month.

"Very few teams can lose a conference tournament and then get an opportunity for redemption the same year," said head coach Steve Podias, in his 13th year with the team.

He attributed their regular season success to having a solid core of returning players and to good recruiting. "I knew they were going to mesh," he says of the players, who pulled off three six-game winning streaks this season and were ranked 7th in the country in steals. "I just didn't think it would happen so fast. They all learned like sponges, just soaked up everything we were teaching them."

Thomas Guerin, a sophomore guard, said that many of the players were pushed by pride.

"We were picked dead last at the beginning of the season," he said. "That motivated us more than anything. When we beat some tough teams early on, we just built off the momentum from that."

The Bridges led the conference in scoring and in scoring margin. Jean-Baptiste was the conference's leading scorer. It has been Podias's most successful season at BC, and the college's best record since the 1949-1950 team went 24-5.

And there may be more to come.