ILS1
01-07-2007, 10:40 AM
PASADENA, Calif. - Those brainy Beavers of Caltech finally won an NCAA basketball game, ending an 11-year streak of futility.
Travis Haussler had 27 points and eight rebounds, and Matt Dellatorre added 24 points and eight rebounds Saturday night to lead the California Institute of Technology to an 81-52 victory over Bard College of New York.
The win halted a 207-game NCAA Division III losing streak, dating to 1996.
“We expected to win a game, but not like this,” Caltech coach Roy Dow said of the surprisingly one-sided victory.
The 44-year-old Dow, in his fifth season at Caltech, added, “It was a combination of a sense of relief and happiness for the kids. They were euphoric.”
It was the Beavers’ first win in 60 games overall, including non-NCAA foes.
Caltech next will try to end an even longer losing streak, 245 consecutive defeats in Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference play going back almost 22 years. The Beavers haven’t begun league play yet this season.
The world-renowned institution where Albert Einstein lectured, Linus Pauling was a professor and 31 Nobel Prize winners either have taught or studied, has extremely high admission standards and draws many of the nation’s top students in science and math.
Like other Division III schools, Caltech does not offer athletic scholarships, and many of its players didn’t so much as play varsity basketball in high school.
In the small but joyous crowd at the game against Bard were new Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau and his wife, Carol Carmichael, who had arrived from Singapore just two hours before tipoff, Dow said.
“They were the first ones who came across the floor and extended congratulations,” the coach said.
He added, “Now we still have to get that other streak.”
Story Link (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16507437/)
Travis Haussler had 27 points and eight rebounds, and Matt Dellatorre added 24 points and eight rebounds Saturday night to lead the California Institute of Technology to an 81-52 victory over Bard College of New York.
The win halted a 207-game NCAA Division III losing streak, dating to 1996.
“We expected to win a game, but not like this,” Caltech coach Roy Dow said of the surprisingly one-sided victory.
The 44-year-old Dow, in his fifth season at Caltech, added, “It was a combination of a sense of relief and happiness for the kids. They were euphoric.”
It was the Beavers’ first win in 60 games overall, including non-NCAA foes.
Caltech next will try to end an even longer losing streak, 245 consecutive defeats in Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference play going back almost 22 years. The Beavers haven’t begun league play yet this season.
The world-renowned institution where Albert Einstein lectured, Linus Pauling was a professor and 31 Nobel Prize winners either have taught or studied, has extremely high admission standards and draws many of the nation’s top students in science and math.
Like other Division III schools, Caltech does not offer athletic scholarships, and many of its players didn’t so much as play varsity basketball in high school.
In the small but joyous crowd at the game against Bard were new Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau and his wife, Carol Carmichael, who had arrived from Singapore just two hours before tipoff, Dow said.
“They were the first ones who came across the floor and extended congratulations,” the coach said.
He added, “Now we still have to get that other streak.”
Story Link (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16507437/)