A devious Pop thinks to himself, “You, reader, have no idea why I’m so stoked right now, and that just makes me even happier! Suck it, world!”

We all know who this silly-grinning bearded-yet-balding man is. He is one of the greatest coaches of the past decade and currently the longest tenured coach in the NBA. He’s a leading candidate for the 2010-2011 Coach of the Year. He’s definitely an interesting personality, from the story behind this picture (bonus points if you know its context) to his style of responding to interview questions. However, today on the dawn of the NCAA championship, we will talk about his coaching career before he made it into the limelight, a dark, oft-forgotten/unknown time in his career: His career as a college D3head coach.

Pop took his first coaching gig at the Air Force Academy (his alma mater) as an assistant. After getting his Masters, Popovich took his first head-coaching job at Pomona-Pitzer in 1979. This Division III team is comprised of 2 colleges in the 5-college Claremont consortium. To say the least, this team was awful. Not much is known other than the following: A) In Pop’s first year, his team had a 2-22 record. B) One of those 22 losses came to Caltech.

To put this in perspective, this is the same Caltech that earlier this year won its first league game in 26 years. The streak is older than Nick Young, a SoCal native himself. There even is a documentary specifically about the team’s unfathomable ineptitude. Here is Caltech’s