Heady players, but no winning formula

"Quantum Hoops" joins coach Roy Dow and the Caltech men's basketball team in 2006, in the midst of a 10-year losing streak.

With March Madness upon us, now is probably a good time for a documentary about a Cinderella team in search of a fairy NCAA Division III godmother. Say hello to the California Institute of Technology's basketball team, the Beavers. They can build a dam. They just can't build a lead. Based on an introductory montage in Rick Greenwald's "Quantum Hoops," the Beavers can't shoot, block, pass, dunk, dribble, rebound, or jump, either. The intro is set to "Blue Danube," but wouldn't the Harlem Globetrotters's whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" be more appropriate, since the Beavers appear to be the division's Washington Generals? By the time we meet the team, in 2006, they haven't won a game in 10 years and lose by an average of 60 points. (A victory ended the streak last year.)

The movie doesn't know what to do with this story, so it does a little of everything. David Duchovny narrates a history of Caltech and its athletic department. Greenwald shows the current coach, Roy Dow, barking on the sidelines. He films the players in the lab and in their dorms (another lab, more or less). Ex-players reminisce about the winning old days. This is all nice, but what's the point? "Quantum Hoops" tosses up such ripe ideas (might there be a scientific explanation for the team's lack of success?) and potentially fascinating developments (why, again, was the department of athletics almost slashed?) but doesn't build from them any appreciable drama or argument.

Couldn't the film have told the story of a single season or explored what it means for a team of genius scientists and math whizzes not to crack the code of their failure? We get glimpses and glosses but never a story. In its shabby assembly, the movie eventually gets around to a thrilling game between Caltech and Whittier College that gives the film a purpose. Not only do you feel the players' urgency to win, you wonder whether people used to losing are secretly terrified to win. It's a compelling question that Greenwald doesn't quite ask. He's too busy earnestly turning his documentary profile into a Caltech recruitment video.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.