The NCAA adopted new rules for improving academic performance yesterday, which could keep the UConn men’s basketball team out of the 2013 NCAA Tournament.
The rules, adopted by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, state that a school cannot participate in the 2013 tournament if its two-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) average is below 930, or if its four-year average is below 900.
The rules won’t be implemented until after this coming season, however, so UConn will be able to compete in this year’s tournament.
UConn’s single-year APR score in 2009-10 was 826, and its most recent four-year APR average was 893. Reportedly, UConn’s single-year APR score from this past season was 975, but even with the improvement, the Huskies’ averages would still fall below the threshold, with a two-year average of 900.5 and a four-year average of 888.5.
The NCAA clarified that the two years used in the averages would be the 2009-10 and 2010-11 years.
“The University of Connecticut has received clarification today that the two APR years for determining eligibility for the 2012-13 NCAA Championships will be 2009-10 and 2010-11,” UConn said in a statement to the Associated Press.
There are some possibilities that could help UConn improve its numbers before the 2013 tournament. Mike Enright, associate athletic director of athletics/communication, said that it was premature to say that UConn would not be eligible, and that there were likely to be some finishing touches before anything could be certain.
UConn President Susan Herbst said in a statement that she agreed with the NCAA’s new rules and that she hoped they could be implemented in the fairest way possible.
“It is my understanding that the NCAA has already begun examining the fairest method for implementing the new rules and I encourage them to make the time frame between a violation and a punish ment as short as possible,” Herbst said. ” Again, we are pleased with the outcome of today’s NCAA decisions and they certainly fit where I want to take this university. Our newly implemented academic plan has already produced an extraordinarily high APR score for our men’s basketball team in 2010-11.”
According to the Hartford Courant, the NCAA is studying the possibility of using numbers from 2010-11 and 2011-12 instead of 2009-10 and 2010-11. For that to be possible, the APR scores would have to be released earlier. They are currently released in May, after the NCAA Tournament.
The Courant’s story reported that the NCAA Committee on Academic Progress has asked NCAA staffers to work with individual schools to determine the feasibility of gathering data more quickly. The story noted that one complication is the fact that some schools run on semesters, others on trimesters and still others on quarters.
One plan that has reportedly been discussed is a system that would release APR scores for winter and spring sports in January and the scores for fall sports in the summer after the conclusion of the College World Series. That would allow scores to be released before the tournament, and a program would learn midseason if it would be eligible, not before the season.
Another possibility would be for UConn to appeal, although Walter Harrison, the president of the University of Hartford and the chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Progress, indicated that the appeals process would be very strict.