Probably no basketball game has ever featured two teams with higher average SAT scores, and probably no audience has ever had a better chance of seeing a future Nobel laureate in science shooting hoops during an NCAA event.
On Friday, January 5, the California Institute of Technology women's basketball team will take on the MIT women's team at 5:30 p.m. in Braun Gymnasium on the Caltech campus in Pasadena. This is the first time the women's teams from the two leading science and technology institutions in America will meet.
Caltech athletics director Tim Downes, who jokingly refers to the MIT team as "the second smartest team in the country," says the game marks a new trend in Caltech athletics.
"We're trying to play more schools we have something in common with," Downes says. The Caltech women's team has played a number of Southern California and Southwestern schools during its five-year existence, but never a top-ranked school from the East Coast.
The MIT Engineers, with a 5-3 season record, compete in NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference. Coached by Melissa Hart, the team has been averaging 65.5 points per game while holding their opponents to a 51.1 average.
The top MIT scorer is 6-foot-1 center Cristina Estrada, who has connected with the bucket on 53 field goals and six free throws for a total of 112 points. Estrada is also the top Engineer rebounder, averaging 28.1 per game.
Other leading scorers are 5-foot-1 Eboney Smith with 70 points and 5-foot-9 Rayna Zachs with 67 points. Zachs is also the team's second-most effective rebounder, with a season average of 27.1.
The Caltech Beavers currently have a 2-5 record and are coached by Rachel Madsen. Also a Division III team, the Beavers play in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics Conference.
Leading scorer for Caltech this season is 5-foot-4 Ada Yu, who has 11 points per game. The top rebounder, with nine per game, is 6-foot-3 Julia Salas, who led the NCAA in rebounds for a time last season during her freshman year.
"We're hoping to start a tradition with MIT," Madsen says. "We'll travel to Boston next year, and we're also playing in an all-tech tournament at the Illinois Institute of Technology next year."
Madsen says she expects the MIT team to be tough, in part because about half of the college's 4,000 students are women, as compared to the approximately 500 undergraduate women at Caltech. "There are four times as many women to pull from," she says.
"The team is pretty excited about it, and as far as I can tell, everybody on campus is excited," Madsen says. "I've gotten e-mails from people who have never been to a basketball game in their life."
Two Caltech students with a particularly keen interest are this year's basketball co-captains, Laurie Gagne and Sarah Hunyadi.
"I've been counting down since 80 days ago, and I announce it periodically at dinner," says Hunyadi, a junior planetary science major. Hunyadi says many of her fellow students are primed for the game, and some have been wearing a T-shirt with the words "MIT, because not everyone can go to Caltech."
Gagne, a junior chemical engineering major, says she hasn't seen the MIT Engineers play, but has heard they are tough competition.
"They're bigger, stronger, and faster, but we're smarter!" Gagne says, laughing.
At halftime, Caltech president David Baltimore will shoot free throws against an opponent or opponents to be announced.
Written by Robert Tindol