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'Quantum Hoops'

Rating:

John Anderson

May 16, 2008

The California Institute of Technology boasts 31 Nobel prize winners on its faculty and one of the saddest basketball records in NCAA history.

Its team had spent 21 years without a conference win at the time director Rick Greenwald started his lovable doc about the tenacious Beavers, who find reason to be ecstatic when they lose by only 14 points. Narrated intelligently by David Duchovny, "Quantum Hoops" is a well-balanced mix of character portrait, play-by-play and Caltech history - during World War II, for instance, when Navy men filled its ranks, Caltech was undefeated.

But the 2006-07 season is something else entirely, and while we know there won't be any NBA draft picks among the Caltech Beavers, that's partly the point: They play for the joy of it, even in defeat, and remind us why boys, and men, play games at all.

QUANTUM HOOPS (unrated). Directed by Rick Greenwald. 1:25. At the Quad Cinemas, Manhattan.