Borrowed from the Caltech Celebration Win gallery

Were they ever known as lovable losers? I don’t know. What I do know is that I love the story of Caltech’s men’s basketball team finally putting their 26-year losing streak to bed. I remember finding a press release about this back in, I think, November and writing a story about it….which got overwritten. Sigh. They had had a chance at ending their losing streak then, but lost the game. This time, they finally did it, and with the media fanfare, you’d think they won a championship! LOL, I love it.

But what everyone seems to forget is that Caltech men’s basketball inspired a storyline on one of my favorite — albeit now-canceled — TV shows.

Anyone remember the show Numb3rs? About half of the characters in the show worked at a fictional university named Calsci….get it? Caltech? Calsci? Anyway, fans of the show pretty much knew that Calsci was based on Caltech, and sometimes I wonder if some of the university scenes were actually filmed there…. Nonetheless, there was an amusing storyline about how horrible Calsci’s men’s basketball team was (cough, cough), so Lakers Pau Gasol and Jordan Farmar were recruited to help the team win a game.

The episodes, not even clips!, are not available on YouTube or at the CBS site, but they did leave this behind the scenes clip online.

And, just for fun, here are a few clips from work about the real Caltech men’s basketball team from today.