It’s quite a Sharks tale.
Two college-basketball nuts have reeled in huge team spirit for the March Madness-bound Sharks of Long Island University with a hot new signature wave — despite neither having even attended the school.
“I would say one of the things about our friendship … is an obsession with college basketball,” Cameron Koffman told The Post of the unwavering commitment he and longtime pal David Pochapin have for LIU.
“And a love for a really, really drawn-out passion side project,” said the Yale University grad, who met Pochapin, a Lehigh University alum, as kids at The Bronx’s Riverdale Country School.
The 28-year-old devoted outsiders recently went viral for creating the overhead “Fins up” clap that LIU’s spirit section — a k a “The Reef” — now does when the team shoots free throws.
The courtside clap is now the hottest expression of college hoops fandom in the land — even being adopted by some University of Nebraska fans and leading Barstool Sports to crown LIU as “America’s team.”
“It took a few years, but the entire college basketball world is picking up on it,” Pochapin said.
Pochapin — who said he learned to read better when his mom gave him The Post sports section as a little boy — and Koffman and a handful of buddies are accustomed to “being the loudest five people at a sporting event.”
He said they were previously often among just a handful fans for games in the gym at the Brooklyn campus of LIU, which also has a site in Brookville on Long Island.
“There was really no one in the building,” the FinTech worker said, particularly during the team’s low tide in 2023, when they won just three games.
Given that “anything you said and did was heard and echoed throughout,” it became the perfect storm to lean into the now-iconic chant they created a year later, he said.
“We always were clapping after the free throws,” said Pochapin, who lives in Chelsea in Manhattan.
“So I guess from there, I just started yelling, ‘Fins up!’ “
Uncharted waters
The men’s dedication throughout the team’s ebbs and flows now has tons of fans swimming to the shark tank.
The section was packed with over-the-top supporters who made the floor shake during the team’s Northeast Conference title-winning 79-70 victory over Mercyhurst on Tuesday night, when LIU properly punched a ticket to the Big Dance, proudly sporting a 14-1 home record as it headed to the NCAA Division I tournament.
“That’s what home-court advantage is about — that energy,” said LIU head coach and former Knick Rod Strickland after last week’s game.
Notable LIU alum and Fox News commentator Brian Kilmeade, who played soccer at the university, is all in on the hype.
“It’s amazing to think the whole country will understand LIU can play with the big guns on the national stage,” he said, adding that it “says a lot about Rod Strickland’s coaching ability.”
Former LIU basketball player-turned-ESPN and MSG broadcaster Alan Hahn is also diving into the madness head-first.
“I had my kids doing fins up every time there was a free throw,” said the Suffolk County native, who’s been watching the team’s fantastic arc religiously this season.
“I think, definitely, the players feel it.”
Senior guard Greg Gordon agreed.
“‘Fins up’ is going to be a thing for this whole tournament,” said the player, who dropped 24 points in the NEC championship game.
“I truly believe it.”
Seas the day
The fin-atical Koffman and Popachn — who previously produced an off-Broadway play called “Celino v. Barnes” about the famous upstate lawyers — adopted LIU as their team after a nomadic stretch of trying to find a local school to root for.
“We went to Columbia, Iona, Fairfield, Manhattan, Fordham, Wagner,” said Koffman, who works in property management.
“We went everywhere,” the Williamsburg resident said.
Strickland’s NBA legacy and sad state of fan affairs at LIU got them hooked three years ago, they said.
Koffman and Pochapin said they made it their side gig to reel in more and more fans, starting with pulling everyone they knew into the craze.
Now the buddies are the Sharks’ de facto boosters.
They’ve taken freshmen players out to a fancy Italian dinner, and Koffman even made a one-of-a-kind donation to the gym thanks to a fisherman family member.
“My stepdad had this 14-foot shark replica based on one he caught. … And my mom basically was like, ‘If it goes in the house, we’re getting a divorce,’ ” Koffman said.
The nautical nonsense is now proudly displayed in a lobby outside of the school’s Brooklyn gym.
The program’s new fan energy has also quelled riptides between the city and suburban alumni, which arose when LIU merged its two athletic programs, the Brooklyn Blackbirds and its Post campus Pioneers, in 2019.
“This to me really feels like the thing that could really be the unifier,” Hahn said of the culture shift and on-court success.
“We’ve been needing this.”
You can bet the duo will be there when the Sharks play during March Madness.
“It has been a surreal experience,” Koffman said.
“It’s just fun to see a team that you get so attached to performing at this level and capturing the heart of the nation.”
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