Roy Dow doesn’t have a typical coaching job.

As the 44-year-old Dexter native scans scouting reports in his office, the current Nobel Prize winner in chemistry is apt to drop by – to talk about team chemistry, of course.

Such is life as the men’s basketball coach at the California Institute of Technology.

Dial the school’s general phone number, and your options not only will include admissions and a staff directory, but also connections to the seismology department and the jet propulsion laboratory.

But while Caltech ranks with the likes of Harvard and MIT in the academic arena, its emphasis on sports certainly doesn’t rank with the athletic elite.

That’s perhaps most pronounced in basketball, where an 81-52 win over Bard College of New York last weekend landed the Beavers national attention usually reserved for champions.

That win ended a 59-game overall losing streak – and a run of 207 consecutive losses against NCAA Division III opponents dating back more than a decade.

“It’s been pretty amazing,” said Dow this week from the Pasadena campus. “NBC and ABC stopped by to do a story on the team Monday, and I’ve been on five or six radio shows, and five or six metro newspapers have been here.”

And that doesn’t even count Dow’s appearance Wednesday on ESPN2’s “Cold Pizza.”

The most surprising aspect of the victory was its ease. Caltech had lost its previous 10 games this season by an average of 36 points.

Of course, when a team loses 59 or 207 in a row, any win is surprising. Dow should know. After a 103-40 loss at Occidental on Wednesday, he’s 3-107 in five years at Caltech.

“The other two wins were the first game I coached here when we won in overtime, and the second one we won in the last 10 seconds, so I wouldn’t have envisioned us winning the way we did,” said Dow, a 1980 Dexter grad who played basketball at Colby College in Waterville.

At most schools such futility is blamed on the coach, but Dow works amid extenuating circumstances. The Caltech roster is dominated by, well, Caltech-types.

“Of the 15 players on our roster, seven were high school varsity players as seniors, and only three of them were starters,” said Dow. “Last year we had more valedictorians on the team than high school starters.”

While many players join the Caltech basketball program lacking experience, they are no less interested in learning. For learning is their life, and therein lies one pressure facing Dow: the pressure to teach.

“The coaching is no different than it is anywhere else in Division I, II or III,” said Dow, whose team plays today at home against Pomona-Pitzer – a team coached by Ellsworth native Charlie Katsiaficas.

“There’s a lot of teaching involved. You’re still teaching fundamentals, and these are kids with a high basketball IQ.”

But any amount of teaching during practice ultimately won’t make up for the lack of a basketball pedigree among most who play for Caltech.

Dow understands that, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.

“I will not let Caltech, with all the excellence it stands for in the academic and scientific areas, let that be an excuse for an abysmal basketball program,” he said. “For me, this is a great experience. I get to be a head coach at the college level, and I’m able to do it in an incredible academic environment among an incredible community of intellects.

“The losing is hard though. That never changes.”

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or at eclark@bangordailynews.net