PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Caltech ended its 310-game
conference losing streak in men’s basketball Tuesday night, beating
Occidental College 46-45 in its season finale.
Ryan Elmquist hit
the go-ahead free throw with 3 seconds left for the Division III
Beavers, who had lost every Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic
Conference game they had played since Jan. 23, 1985.
"I hope that
everyone who has participated in Caltech men’s basketball is able to
celebrate a little bit tonight," Caltech coach Oliver Eslinger said. "We
still have goals and aspirations that we want to accomplish as a
program, and this win is another step towards meeting these objectives."
Caltech
is a famed private research university with a heavy emphasis on science
and engineering. The school has just 950 undergraduates and doesn’t
give out athletic scholarships, but 31 alumni and faculty have won the
Nobel Prize.
Caltech finished the season 5-20, its best record in
15 years. The Beavers went 0-25 last season and hadn’t won more than one
game in any of their previous eight seasons — but back in 2007, Caltech
ended an NCAA-record 207-game losing streak with a victory over Bard
College of New York.
The Beavers have a great sense of humor about
their athletic struggles, but they still celebrated at the Braun
Athletic Center after Occidental missed its desperation shot at the
buzzer.
When Caltech won its last conference game more than 26
years ago, four-time NBA champion coach Gregg Popovich was running the
bench at SCIAC rival Pomona-Pitzer.
Not everything is looking up
athletically at Caltech: The women’s basketball team finished its season
0-25, losing to Occidental 82-35 on Tuesday night.
