I'm trying to remember what the source for this article was, but all I know is that the athletes didn't think it was very funny. Hopefully time has healed most of their wounds, b/c this may sting a little if it hasn't.
Caltech's hoops IQ lacking
By PAUL OBERJUERGE, Sports Editor
REDLANDS - Hey, Coach Downtrodden: Stop your whining. You think your program is hopeless? No talent, no support, no history?
Stow it.
Check out Caltech's basketball program. Then you will realize your troubles are absolute zero. As solvable as Euclidian geometry or classical mechanics. Not even worth discussing.
Caltech plays NCAA college basketball. Well, it schedules games and has kids who show up. Whether what it does is basketball is open to debate.
Caltech is perhaps the nation's best school, academically. It is small. It is elite. It is lousy with National Merit Scholars, kids with IQs off the charts, and every second guy scored 800 on the math portion of the SAT.
Heck of a place to go to school.
Hell of a place to try to win basketball games.
Caltech is a member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, like Redlands and Occidental and those folks, and Caltech is having a bit of trouble keeping up.
To the tune of 193 consecutive SCIAC men's basketball defeats. Going back to 1985.
Now that's a program in a black hole.
The 193rd consecutive defeat came at the hands of Redlands on Wednesday, a 137-68 setback that, get this, actually wasn't all that bad a night for the meager Beavers.
Their points as a percentage of Redlands' score, a number Caltechsters can calculate in their heads, was just shy of 50 percent. Which is much better than that 85-27 game with Claremont last week.
Not that it made first-year coach Roy Dow happy. You chat with Dow, and you realize this guy is hot as a white dwarf. He doesn't like losing. Even after he tells you, "Every single guy on this roster would get cut by every other team in this league.'
Decades of Caltech rationalization of its hoops status doesn't achieve critical mass with Dow, formerly of Maine's Colby College. "No moral victories is what I told them,' Dow said, fixing his glare on a reporter.
In that case, Caltech victories will be as few and far between as five-digit primes. The Beavers are 1-18 this season, overall, with a victory over somebody called Cooper Union to open the season.
At school, Caltech's guys solve problems for profs. On the court, they create them for coaches.
How to put this delicately ... These guys can't play.
They are short, slow, weak, stiff and clumsy. They can walk and chew gum at the same time, but it seems to require their utmost concentration. Factor in opponents and a basketball, and, Houston, we've got a problem.
It comes as no surprise when Dow says only three of his guys played varsity prep basketball. We believe him. Especially when we saw some of Caltech's reserves. Guys who can't dribble or shoot. Who wouldn't play for most of the county's smaller high schools. They understand the parabola behind draining the three; it's getting the muscles to cooperate that is the killer.
There also is the matter of distractions. Like, these guys are wading through a curriculum that would make a Rhodes scholar blanch. They are known to skip a practice or 10 to grapple till 3 a.m. with quantum physics and thermodynamics.
Caltech's best player, senior 6-4 forward Jonathan Bird, "has missed 75 percent of our practices and 50 percent of our games,' Dow said. Studying. Imagine that. Bird will be absent for Caltech's game Saturday because he won an internship that will have him at the observatory on Mt. Palomar that night. Slacker.
The Beavers never quit, but they were no match for Redlands. It was as competitive as a computer vs. an abacus. Redlands' trapping defense forced Caltech into 44 turnovers (dribbling; hard!), and the Bulldogs all night basically scored two points for every one by Caltech. Even when Redlands coach Gary Smith plumbed the farthest reaches of his bench.
How to get better? Uh, that's a problem, too, at a school where the average incoming student (in a class of only 250) scored 1510 on the SAT, including 774 on math. "You don't normally associate basketball talent with the profile of our average student,' said Mark Harriman, associate athletic director.
Caltech won't cut the athletic department some slack and let in some "dumb jock' who managed a mere 1400 on the SAT. So that is a dead end.
Also fruitless is the idea of creating your own talent. Every Caltech team is thin on experience because kids get tired of losing, and they get busy with classical waves and kinetic theory.
Caltech has a plan, though. The Beavers are going proactive. Instead of opening practice and see which future Mission Control engineers turn up, they have identified kids who have a shot at qualifying academically, and e-mailed every last one of them to see if they play basketball.
Dow said they have found a dozen-plus geniuses who also can play a little. He figures if he can get a couple of those guys into school, "a 6-7 guy and an athletic guard,' and fill around them with the more coordinated of the Einsteins who just show up ... well, Caltech isn't going to go another 193 SCIAC games without winning one.
Said Harriman: "We want them to excel, academically, but we also want them to take the interest and commitment to being on the team. The byproduct may be a loss, but we don't want it to be the expectation of a loss.'
Said Dow: "Check back in two years. We plan to win.'
Hmmm. Well. These Caltech guys are known for getting things done, when they put their minds to it.
