Fans and visitors entering the Bronx High School of Science gymnasium are greeted with a huge placard featuring the faces of seven stoic looking men arranged underneath the text “Alumni Winners of the Nobel Prize.”

It is impressive, but probably not to opposing athletic teams coming in to face the “Bronx Science” Wolverines on the basketball court.

Bronx Science is indeed a campus of learned adolescents. The stereotype is that students there are not jocks. They might tell jokes about parabolas and physics equations. They’re probably used to hearing the term, “nerd.”

But to believe that brains would inhibit the Bronx Science basketball team’s ability to play would be a gross underestimation. These boys may spend their days with their heads buried in textbooks, but on the court they play ball like mad dogs.

Coach Sammel Brown says the team’s academic reputation attracts all types of jeers and trash talking from opposing fans.

“I’ve heard it all,” Brown says. “I provoke it…we hear the jeers, I tell [the team], ‘this is what they’re saying, so let’s make them feel destroyed.’” Brown invites the negativity. “We feed off it,” he says.

One of only a handful of New York City public high schools that requires an entrance exam from prospective students, Bronx Science has an inherent disadvantage when it comes to athletics. Without a large pool of students flowing into the school, athletic talent is harder to come by.

“It is a disadvantage,” Brown says, “but I think if you prepare the kids in the same way, they pick it up faster.”

This season, the team has picked it up especially fast. Their final regular-season record, 12-7, boasts more wins than the team has collected in the last two seasons combined.

Much of this improvement can be attributed to Brown, the team’s new coach. Brown, who spent three years coaching at the Eagle Academy for Young Men, came to Bronx Science in 2009. Brown brought with him a philosophy that the team, no matter how disadvantaged, could play with anybody.

Brown also brought new tactics. He scrapped the passive zone defense of years past and now employs relentless full-court pressure. The “press” is a staple of basketball strategy and favors smaller teams with less talent.

For example, in a game against Evander Childs on Jan. 22, Bronx Science’s pressure defense forced a tidal wave of turnovers, which led to easy fast break baskets.  Bronx Science’s style looked like controlled chaotic fun compared to Evander Childs’ deliberate, structured offense.

Brown even had his team on the verge of a post season brith and having his Wolverines competing in the Federation State Championship tournament in Glens Falls.

A birth in the tournament seemed a long shot after a tough January loss to local rival DeWitt Clinton.

Brown says that loss forced the team to focus on their priorities.

“We sat there for an hour after the game talking about the season,” said Brown. “And there we decided we will be upstate at Glens Falls competing for the title.”

After the Clinton game, Bronx Science ripped off four straight wins, knocking off Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Walton, and Grace Dodge, in that order.

Their last opponent, however, Alfred E. Smith Tech, proved too formidable for Bronx Science, defeating the Wolverines, 79-57 on Feb. 5.

Though they failed to make the postseason, Bronx Science’s success has already shattered a placard’s worth of stereotypes.