As the Binghamton men’s soccer team gathered in the Events Center media room, pizza was brought in, players joked with one another, photographers and reporters took their pictures and gathered their reports — all in anticipation of finding out who the Bearcats would face in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. But it was a pair of shoes that stole that show.

Head coach Paul Marco — dressed professionally otherwise — sported a pair of purple, pink and baby blue basketball shoes. No, it was not Casual Thursday; there was a relevance to Marco’s choice of footwear.

“In September, late September, before we were beginning conference play, we met with the guys, and we talked about the double and winning the regular season title,” Marco explained. “And the guys just said, ‘Coach, if we win it, will you shave your head?’ and I said I had done that before; I had shaved my head in ’92, my first year as a coach … we started the season off 0-4-1, and a couple of my friends said, ‘You know, if we win the Atlantic-10, will you shave your head?’ I said ‘Yeah, and if we lose I’m shaving all of yours!’ And they agreed with it, and then I ended up shaving my head at the end of that year.

“And then this year the guys said it, and I said, ‘Look guys, it doesn’t really work to shave my head, it’s not much difference [referring to his hairline],’ so then they said, ‘OK, if we win you gotta wear David Grad’s [freshman goalkeeper] shoes for one day,’ and I said ‘Sure, you guys can pick the day,’ and they wanted it to be today, the day of the selection show. So obviously I’m proud to wear them today, because that meant that something great happened.”

Something great did happen this season. After losing several star players to graduation this past spring, after being voted to finish in the middle of the pack in the America East coaches’ preseason poll, after losing key players to injuries and after starting out the season 0-3-1, the Bearcats won the AE regular season title. And then, in a tournament that ended this past Saturday at West Gym Field, they won the postseason title, bringing home the America East championship and with it a bid to the NCAA tournament.

‘When we came up with [the shoe idea] I think it kind of took the focus off of losing and [put] a little more emphasis on enjoying each other’s time together … winning just was then a second piece of it; sometimes you need a little motivation outside of just winning and losing, because the pressures of that can be great,” Marco said.

Harvard University, the vaunted king of the Ivy Leagues and the 17th-ranked team in the nation with a 12-4-0 record, will be the Bearcats’ opponent this weekend in the opening round.

Binghamton University President Lois DeFleur walked into the media room shortly after the 4 p.m. ESPNews program announcing the NCAA tournament bracket had ended, and she joked about SUNY’s Ivy taking on The Ivy.

It’s been a Cinderella season for the Bearcats, and, on Thursday, Marco was wearing the glass slippers. And, though the fairy tale is not yet over, win or lose in the NCAA tournament this one already has a happy ending, no matter what.