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College Basketball

Sky-High SATs, but the Team’s at Rock Bottom

Danny Moloshok for The New York Times

Coach Oliver Eslinger after the California Institute of Technology recorded two straight wins for the first time in 18 years. More Photos »

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PASADENA, Calif. — Of all colleges, it would seem, the California Institute of Technology should have the least trouble doing the math. Yet its basketball team was left guessing about the precise length of its conference losing streak, which began in 1985.

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Danny Moloshok for The New York Times

Spectators took a spin while Caltech beat Eastern Nazarene, 87-53, for its first back-to-back victories in 18 years. More Photos »

In the university’s cafeteria the other day, shortly after the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Robert H. Grubbs stopped by to chat, Caltech Coach Oliver Eslinger and part of his team debated the answer to a problem that began years before any of the players were born.

“You guys all got 800s on your math SATs,” Eslinger reminded the players.

The freshman guard Mike Paluchniak did the rough multiplication in his head — years times conference games per season — and said the streak must be around 300. Collin Murphy, a sophomore guard, said he received a text message from a friend before a game late last season reading: “If you guys lose today, it’s 300 straight. Good luck.”

Eslinger, the third-year coach, thought it had slipped past 300, too.

Frankly, it is one answer they do not really care to know. After all, current coaches and players had nothing to do with most of Caltech’s losses. Besides, they think the streak is about to end.

“It’s not if we’re going to win,” Paluchniak said. “It’s how many we’re going to win.”

Conference play in the N.C.A.A. Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference begins after the holiday break. Caltech’s losing streak sits at 297, according to the athletic department.

It is a daunting and remarkable history of losing, yet there is an unfamiliar bravado brewing. The season’s first victory, over American Sports University, broke an overall 44-game losing streak that dated to January 2009. A blowout 87-53 home victory Monday against Eastern Nazarene gave Caltech its first two-game winning streak in 18 years.

The last time Caltech (2-5) won two games in a season was in 2001-2. The last time it won three was in 1996-97. The last time Caltech had a winning season was 1954.

“We’re out to show that we’re going to beat you,” said Eslinger, a 35-year-old former assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in counseling and sports psychology. “And you’re going to come work for us.”

The bold declaration surprised his players. He found a softer tone.

“We want to win with the smartest students in the world,” he said.

Caltech is considered one of the nation’s top research institutions. Faculty and alumni have won 32 Nobel Prizes. About 35 percent of its graduates go on to earn a Ph.D. A quarter of its 967 undergraduate students arrived this fall with SAT scores of 2,330 (out of 2,400) or better.

The university has a long history of athletics — it was a founding member of the S.C.I.A.C. in 1915 — but a short one of winning. The baseball team has lost 163 straight games, dating to 2003, and has not won a conference game since 1988, a streak of 407 losses. Since joining the conference (which includes California Lutheran, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, La Verne, Occidental, Pomona-Pitzer, Redlands and Whittier), the women’s volleyball team has never won a conference match, a string of 154 losses dating to 2000. The university does not have a football team.

“We have young people at Caltech who are clearly brilliant,” said Caltech’s president, Jean-Lou Chameau. “They are driven to be the best scientists, the best engineers in the world.”

Chameau, who arrived in 2006 after serving as the provost at Georgia Tech, hesitated when asked if winning was important.

“Those young people are trying to compete the best they can, so it matters if they win,” he said. “They really want to win, and we should do everything we can do to help them win. But it does not matter the way it matters at a place like Georgia Tech.”

A basketball in Eslinger’s office is covered in autographs — not from players, but from the five Nobel laureates currently on the faculty. Pointing to a photograph of the team he inherited, Eslinger counted 5 among the 17 players who had played high school basketball. There were more valedictorians than starters.

Before Eslinger’s arrival, the combination of brains and bungling basketball led to a 2008 documentary called “Quantum Hoops.” It was well received by critics. Eslinger bristles at its mention. It is not the kind of attention he wants, he said.

This year’s 15-member team includes four freshmen and eight sophomores, and the heights of the players in the starting lineup range from 6 feet 2 inches to 6-7. None of the players have Division I talent, but erase any revenge-of-the-nerds imagery.

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