Bringing the Shoe to Brooklyn College

He knew they’d have a great season but the coach concedes that with his star players all in their junior year, there was a chance his team might get complacent, realize they still had another year to win it all, and not play with the kind of fire in the belly they’d need to finally bring that shoe back to Brooklyn.

So Steve Podias, now in his seventeenth year as head coach of the Brooklyn College men’s basketball team, looked, as he always does, for a little something extra to inspire the guys.  He found it on January 23 when the Bridges lost to Baruch College’s Bearcats in a nail-biting, heart-pounding game in which Bridges forward Richard Jean-Baptiste found himself on the wrong side of a controversial whistle with three-tenths of a second left in regulation. The call sent Baruch’s Mike Deitz to the free-throw line where he converted the first shot to give his team a one point victory that Podias instantly recognized as the moment he’d been looking for.

"I remember in the locker room afterwards, the guys looked so dejected," recalls Podias. "I told them to keep their heads up: We’re meeting them again and revenge is sweet."

It was sweet indeed, nearly a month later when the team delivered a twenty-point drubbing to Baruch and won the CUNYAC championship, which meant that for the first time in more than thirty-five years, the Dutch Shoe Trophy—an award crowned with a wooden Dutch shoe that finds a home each year, like Hockey’s Stanley Cup, with the defending champions—would be coming back to Brooklyn.

"Before the game, Rich said we are not leaving that gym without that shoe," says Podias, referring to the team captain.  "I always tell them, never ever, ever put off something for tomorrow because you never know when you will have the opportunity again.  I was glad to see they took that to heart."

It was a crowning moment for Podias, who was born and raised in this basketball town and who has coached on the college level for some twenty years.  He still gets a little emotional talking about it, even just mentioning that requisite championship moment when his players dumped a keg of water over him.

"That moment told me that they cared.  And after the game, I told the guys I love them and thanks for a great season," says Podias, who cut the net off the backboard’s rim after the game.  "Sharing that championship with the kids was as good an experience as any.  I put it behind only my wedding and the birth of my kids.  To be able to hug the players and wear that net around my neck was really something.  It was a shared lifetime experience that I don’t think any of us will forget."

The team went on to play in their first NCAA tournament in nearly thirty years, where they played hard but came up short against St. Lawrence University, ending their season at 23-6.  But that just gives them something to play for next season.

"This time next year," says Podias, "we want to be winning the NCAA tournament."

Read Richard Jean-Baptiste’s story: BC Bridges and MVP Richard Jean-Baptiste Make History: Win CUNYAC Title and Reach NCAA