NJIT Fails to Keep on Losing

When I was in high school, our varsity football team didn’t win a game for over two full seasons. The losing streak was somewhere in the 20’s (after one winless season, you stop keeping track). It sounds miserable, but actually, it was kind of cool, in a loser sort of way. It was our lone sporting claim to fame (aside from being the team on the losing end of the State Championship game in

-- an awful, awful film). We relished in our futility. ↵↵I’d have to imagine that when your school’s basketball team loses 51 straight games, you have a similar feeling. Such is -- or I should say, was -- the case with the NJIT Highlanders, who won their first game since February of 2007 last night. For one evening, the players were on top of the world:↵

↵↵⇥“It was obviously frustrating, but we honestly didn’t think too much of the streak,” said Stonkus, the only member of the program to endure all 51 losses. “We just kept trying to think about the next game and then the next one. It never came down to where we thought we’d never get one. This feels great.” ↵↵I’m sure it did feel great to finally win one, for both the players and students. But sometime today, they’re all going to realize that now they’re just another losing basketball program that is one for its last 52, only to be forgotten about ... at least until their next streak hits the half-century mark. They play Longwood (ironically, the last team they beat before last night) on Saturday. It’s never too early to start streaking again towards the all-time NCAA basketball record of 117 straight losses. Infamy and fame is the same thing these days, really.↵