From the AP’s Charles “Blue Moon” Odum (link courtesy Jon Solomon)

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.
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 in Pasadena 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.

Above is a photograph of Bard Men’s hoops coach Chris Wood. If anyone is interested, the domain name firechriswood.com is still available.