Quantum Hoops' at Alamo Lake Creek
By Mark Fagan
Austin Chronicle
April 18, 2008

'Quantum Hoops' screens at the Alamo Lake Creek Thursday, April 24, at 7:30pm

With no athletic scholarships to offer and extremely stringent academic requirements for admittance, there really isn't much room for recruiting when it comes to fielding a basketball team at egghead central, aka the California Institute of Technology. If you are the coach of the Caltech Beavers (nature's engineers), your team consists of those who show up for the first practice and dedicate themselves to the team. This is not a minor issue considering the daunting amount of classwork these student/athletes take on.

Quantum Hoops: The Caltech Basketball Story follows the Caltech basketball team during the final week of their 2006 season not in an attempt to chronicle a conference championship or any other such athletic accomplishment, but to document a team that has 240 consecutive conference losses. Two hundred and forty games without a victory equals 21 years of continuously losing, usually by about 60 points or more.

For most typical athletes, this losing streak would be unbearable, and while it is frustrating for the young men who make up the Caltech squad, the lessons learned on the court, in practice, and from their coaches over the years do much to inform their scientific research, which is also fraught with constant failure until … eureka, success.

Do the not-so-mighty brainy Beavers finally break that losing streak? You can find out Thursday, April 24, 7:30pm at the Alamo Lake Creek theatre. Director Rick Greenwald will be in attendance, and a Q&A will take place following the feature. Click here to visit the Quantum Hoops website.