FAYETTEVILLE – The Arkansas men’s basketball program will lose one scholarship for falling below the NCAA’s academic progress rate benchmark for the 2009-10 academic reporting period.
The numbers, released Tuesday, show Arkansas’ four-year APR percentage of 892 is up from an 886 multi-year score during the last reporting period, but still well below the NCAA’s benchmark of 925.
It is the third consecutive year the program has fallen below the NCAA benchmark. Arkansas was placed on notice of possible penalties by the NCAA two years ago, but the school avoided penalties last spring because its single-year APR score improved significantly from 755 in the 2007-08 academic year to 955 in 2008-09.
The’ single-year APR score for the men’s basketball program in the 2009-10 year – the most recent reporting period – was 918.
It was the only of the university’s 19 varsity programs to fall below the NCAA benchmark or the athletic department’s internal benchmark of 935.
“While I am disappointed that we have been assigned a penalty in our men’s basketball program, I am pleased with the direction we are moving in correcting APR issues of the past,” Arkansas athletics director Jeff Long said. “The seeds of this penalty were sewn three years ago and while some progress was made, we still fell short of our goal of remaining free of APR penalties.”
Long said new Razorbacks coach Mike Anderson was made aware of the potential penalties during the hiring process in March. If all scholarship players are eligible next season, the penalty won’t be enforced until the 2012-13 season.
“My staff and I are committed to working very hard to make sure our players are doing the right things both on and off the court in an effort to insure that APR penalties do not occur in the future,” Anderson said in a statement.
Anderson was hired to replace John Pelphrey, who was fired after four seasons as Arkansas’ coach in March. At the time of Pelphrey’s firing, Long said on-court success and classroom success were among several factors taken into account.
“(The APR) was certainly a factor,” Long said. “We’ve stressed that since we’ve arrived.
“I think it’s part of the overall leadership of the program.”
The penalty will leave Arkansas with 12 scholarship basketball players for at least one season. The program was also subject to a loss of four hours practice time each week, a punishment it avoided.
“Because of our success, our single-year rate, they’ve seen what we have done and we did not get the practice penalty,” Long said. “We think that is a good sign. As we look at it and try to forecast for the future, we don’t anticipate having another penalty next year.”
Even with a perfect single-year APR score, Arkansas would not have been able to attain the NCAA’s multi-year benchmark, UA director of compliance Jon Fagg said.
“That was part of our argument to the NCAA, that it didn’t matter what we did last year or this year, the maximum total would have been 923,” Fagg said. “If we had perfect scores and nothing had gone wrong in two consecutive years, it would have been 923 because of that 755.
“We tried to explain the mathematics of the whole thing to the NCAA. At the end of the day, they felt we had done some, so they gave us some relief and will allow us to practice, but took away the scholarship.”
The UA had six programs finish with a multi-year APR of higher than 984, including a perfect score for women’s gymnastics.
The Razorbacks football program finished with a 937 multi-year APR and the baseball program had a multi-year score of 961.
You can follow Matt Jones on Twitter @NWAMatt.
My score of following all of that is 754. I thought they already had GPA requirements to stay in school? What make up the inter math for these scores? Whatever it is if you can have two years in a row of it being perfect; but your so called PROGRESS (APR) is inadequate; and you can get penalty, it lacks credibility in my mind.
Just from reading this board over the past year, I would have thought that UA Basketball was in the Top 5 in this category under Coach Pel.
I hope we get to hear how CMA inherit some of CJP issues as well as recruits.
I wonder how our football, basketball, and baseball scores stack up against other SEC schools?
I think its’s safe to say CA won’t have to deal with six seniors not graduating like Pel did after his first year (especially given that four of Pel’s guys have graduated, eh?).
What year will the reduction be applied? Any impact on this year’s class?
Omaha,
If all scholarship players are eligible next season, the penalty won’t be enforced until the 2012-13 season.
This ridicules rule / penalty parallel the sanctions given to NCAA institutions after the culprit has long gone from the University. i.e. Reggie Bush.
Not certain why we even need to be talking about seniors that didn’t graduate Pel’s first year? But if we do, was that the first time it was bad? Because I do not recall Pel being faced with losing scholarships because of Nolans’s class 5 years earlier?
Let me see if I get it straight, NCAA says that if some students are not academically successful, it will result in the school not being able to give another student a scholarship opportunity as punishment 5 years later?
Your timeline is a tad off. Check Chris Bahn’s article at
http://www.arkansassports360.com/24981/bahn-ncaa-taking-it-easy-on-razorbacks-when-assessing-apr-penalties
for some good details on the situation (and see just how kind the ncaa was to the Hawgs in this situation).
“Not certain why we even need to be talking about seniors that didn’t graduate Pel’s first year?”
Again: those seniors that didn’t graduate in 2007-08 are the ones who gave Arkansas that awful 755 APR we’re being punished for NOW. That’s why we get to talk about seniors that didn’t graduate Pel’s first year. Not sure what Pel could have done about that; those were Heath’s babies.
regardless of why, we didn’t meet minimum standards.
if we are going to recruit the best, the parents must know that we WILL degree their kids. if all our other sports passed with flying colors, there is no reason basketball can’t. kids that want a degree are much easier to coach than kids that are only looking for a quick trip to the pro’s.
Yeah… We also had the lowest APR score out of the whole SEC in football too..
http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/23123/apr-for-sec-schools
The intent behind many of the NCAA rules and regulations is good. The disparity in enforcement of those rules and regulations is not so good, if not absolutely ridiculous.
Bottom line: Kids who are looking to stay in school, get a degree and graduate have to be a premium on the recruitment trail, which in this day and time, may be easier said than done.
Many congrats to Coach A, his staff and program involving this issue while at Missouri.
I am sure the numbers mean something that is important, but I simply do not understand how calculated enough tojump in on relevance.
i.e. “The APR is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.” from ESPN
So does a student dropping out of school to declare early negatively impact the numbers? If someone has, I would love tosee the math behind the calculations. In the meantime, I concede that it must be bad because we are on the bottom, but I can also point to years where I had thousands of dollars in losses on bad investments but in previous and subsequent years my earnings have been above market. My point to all of this implys that 1 bad year seem to be disproportionate to issue and intent.
Dont forget in Pels 2nd year there was also Beverly, Montrell Mc donald, and Henry as well as a couple others that left that year that also went against us.
Have a peaceful Sleep. Good night and sweet Dreams Mr Bachchan.