Caltech Wins!

rimrocker · Feb 23, 2011

Bunch of math nerds over there...

Caltech Scores First Conference Victory Since 1985
By JOHN BRANCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/sports/ncaabasketball/24caltech.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

The California Institute of Technology men’s basketball team won a conference game Tuesday night for the first time since 1985, breaking a losing streak believed to have stretched to 310 games.

The team’s 46-45 home victory over Occidental, in the final game of the season, was the first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory for Caltech since a 1-point win over La Verne more than 26 years ago, before any of the current players were born.

Ryan Elmquist scored the winning point by making the first of two free throws with three seconds left. He missed the second, and Occidental’s desperation shot from halfcourt was off target, sending students and fans in the small Braun Athletic Center gym onto the court for a celebration of hugs and whoops.

“Tonight’s win is a testament to the hard work each member of this team, the alumni and the supporters have put into this program,” Coach Oliver Eslinger said after the game, according to the athletic department’s Web site. “I hope that everyone who has participated in Caltech men’s basketball is able to celebrate a little bit tonight.”

Eslinger and the Caltech team, profiled in December by The New York Times, thought this would be the season the streak would end. It had been 14 years since the Beavers won three games in a season, yet they won four nonconference games in December and early January.

“It’s not if we’re going to win,” the freshman guard Mike Paluchniak said in December. “It’s how many we’re going to win.”

Once conference play began, however, Caltech found itself in its usual place — on the wrong end of the score, if only barely.

It lost an overtime game to Redlands on Jan. 12. It lost by 2 points at Whittier on Jan. 29, followed by a 1-point home loss to La Verne. When Caltech played at Occidental on Jan. 26, the Beavers lost, 53-43.

Eslinger, a former assistant at M.I.T., brought a doctorate in counseling and sports psychology three seasons ago to Caltech, home of 32 Nobel prizes and an undergraduate population of about 950. He also brought an unusual emphasis on recruiting basketball players. The team he inherited had only five players with high school basketball experience. Now, he recruits basketball players who happen to be among the nation’s top academic minds.

“We want to win with the smartest students in the world,” Eslinger said in December.

Caltech finished the season 5-20, 1-13 in conference. The basketball team has not had a winning season since 1954.

Attention may now shift to the school’s baseball team, which has lost 412 consecutive conference games since 1988, and 170 consecutive games over all, dating to 2003.
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SuperBeeKay · Feb 23, 2011

in 10 years, lets see who the real winner is rofl

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