apr – Rush The Court

Morning Five: Columbus Day Edition

RTC — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 12:01:57 +0000

The month of Midnight Madness celebrations continued over the weekend, with a number of schools choosing to reveal their 2013-14 teams to the public on Friday night. The most prominent basketball school of this weekend’s group was Marquette, entertaining some 4,000 fans at the Al McGuire Center for Marquette Madness. The event trotted out the tried-and-true Madness standards: a three-point shooting contest (won by Jake Thomas), a dunk contest (won by Deonte Burton), etc., but one unique aspect of this version was that the school also handed out a “Lifetime Achievement Award” as part of the proceedings. Chris Otule, a [...]

Morning Five: 06.06.13 Edition

rtmsf — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:01:15 +0000

College basketball’s worst kept secret became official late Wednesday night, as Missouri’s Michael Dixon, apparently the Teflon Don of sexual assault allegations in Columbia, announced via Twitter that he was transferring to Memphis. As we discussed in yesterday’s piece addressing the rumors of his transfer, Dixon brings a very interesting combination of talent and experience to a Tigers team desperately in need of some heady play to supplement the occasional wildness of returnees Joe Jackson and Chris Crawford. The question of whether Dixon will ever suit up with those two rising seniors, though, will be for the NCAA to decide, [...]

Big East M5: 02.15.13 Edition

Dan Lyons — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:45:50 +0000

As expected, more details have emerged in the Jim Boeheim-Andy Katz “feud”, which came to a head last night when Boeheim called Katz an idiot and refused to answer his questions at the presser that followed Syracuse’s loss at Connecticut. What was originally assumed by many to be an issue with Katz sharing some information about James Southerland’s academic issues now seems to be more about last year’s Bernie Fine fiasco. Let’s hear from Boeheim: “It’s really simple. I went to New York last year to play in the (NIT Pre-Season Tip-Off) Tournament in November and he (Katz) asked if he could interview me [...]

Big East M5: 12.05.12 Edition

Dan Lyons — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:45:02 +0000

St. John’s 81-65 loss on the road at San Francisco may have seemed like just another non-conference game in preparation for the Big East gauntlet which kicks off in early January. To Steve Lavin, though, this game meant a whole lot more. Steve’s father Cap Lavin played guard at San Francisco in the early 1950s, and was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 1997. With his son’s trip out west, the school honored Lavin at halftime. San Francisco Chronicle writer Steve Kroner’s piece on this father-son relationship is an excellent read. Where many sporting parents may push their [...]

UAB Fines Athletes to Improve Academic Standards; Slippery Slope?

Chris Johnson — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:05:24 +0000

Christopher Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Earlier this year, Connecticut was one of 10 college basketball teams to receive a one-year postseason ban for not meeting the NCAA’s minimum four-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) threshold of 900. The Huskies filed an appeal, arguing that recent reforms had produced increased scores over the past two years. In the end, though, the NCAA stuck to its guns and reaffirmed its initial ruling. And so it was that UConn – a program that has experienced a rapid rise into the college hoops elite under coach Jim Calhoun – just [...]

Morning Five: 08.10.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:31:29 +0000

Years ago when things were still going well for Billy Gillispie at Kentucky, we took him and his supporters to task for the ridiculous and utterly embarrassing notion that offering scholarships to 8th graders was a good idea (Michael Avery, anyone?). Thankfully coaches are no longer allowed to sniff around the junior high schoolyards as much as they used to, but that doesn’t mean that young players still can’t make pie-in-the-sky commitments years before they can even drive. As Gary Parrish wrote Thursday, Indianapolis junior Trey Lyles‘ recent de-commitment from Tom Crean’s flagship state school exhibits exactly why it’s probably [...]

Morning Five: 07.16.12 Edition

rtmsf — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:31:08 +0000

It seemed like just another summer Friday to most of us around the college basketball universe, but Friday the 13th to Connecticut represented the school’s last chance at a reprieve from the NCAA regarding its postseason ban for next season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NCAA Committee on Academic Performance wrapped up its meeting last week with no change to its policies in calculating the Academic Progress Rate (APR), effectively shutting down UConn’s final hopes for a last-minute shift in its eligibility. The good news for the Husky program is that on the same day head coach Jim Calhoun, who has two [...]

ACC Weekly Five: 06.26.12 Edition

KCarpenter — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:31:07 +0000

Raleigh News & Observer: Lorenzo Brown, arguably one of the top three point guards in the ACC last year, will be undergoing exploratory knee surgery Tuesday. Brown is one of the key cogs of a North Carolina State team that figures to be a major contender for the top spot in the conference next season. While coach Mark Gottfried’s worries are probably somewhat ameliorated by incoming freshman point guard, Tyler Lewis, losing an experienced point guard for even a few games can be fairly tough in the ACC. Durham Herald Sun: In news that is surprising no one, Mike Krzyzewski confirmed that [...]

Besides UConn, Which Teams Were Most Significantly Hurt By APR Ban?

EJacoby — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:05:32 +0000

When news broke this week that 10 teams would receive postseason bans due to insufficient Academic Progress Reports, immediate reactions all centered around the one big name team on the list – Connecticut. Sadly, the National Champions of just two seasons ago won’t even have a chance to participate in March Madness next season. But there are nine other schools that also flunked the APR test and are therefore disallowed from the 2013 NCAA Tournament. Did any of these other teams have shots at the Big Dance next year? The answer: Three teams in particular lost out big time from [...]

Morning Five: 06.22.12 Edition

rtmsf — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:31:05 +0000

Last night marked the end of another season of basketball as the NBA crowned its newest champion, the Miami Heat, and we now head into a four-month dry spell without competitive hoops (the Summer Olympics next month will provide a brief respite). While the evening definitely belonged to LeBron James’ coronation as one of the all-time greats, a pair of his role player teammates joined the short list of players to have won both a national title in college as well as a world title in the NBA. With the Heat’s victory, Kansas’ Mario Chalmers (2008) and Duke’s Shane Battier [...]

Morning Five: 04.23.12 Edition

rtmsf — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:31:41 +0000

Last week, Wisconsin’s Jarrod Uthoff became perhaps the most well-known non-contributor in college basketball, as the redshirt freshman’s public fracas with head coach Bo Ryan over his transfer made headlines and sparked debate throughout the college basketball world. If you were vacationing in Bali last week, the long and short of it is that Uthoff ‘s request to transfer was met with a list of 26 schools (including the entire Big Ten and ACC) to which he was restricted. Bo Ryan’s version of events, as told to Seth Davis, suggests that he was merely minimizing the chance that Uthoff would [...]

NCAA Sticks to Its Guns: UConn Appeal Denied

rtmsf — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:34:32 +0000

In news today that was only surprising to those who believe the NCAA has no spine, the organization denied Connecticut‘s final appeal over its eligibility for the 2013 NCAA Tournament based on its Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores. NCAA legislation enacted last October requires a four-year average APR of 900 or a two-year average of 930 in order to become eligible for next year’s Tournament — UConn’s APRs of 826 in 2009-10 and 978 in 2010-11 average out to a two-year score of 902 (well below the 930 cutoff), and its four-year average of 893 also comes up shy of [...]

Trick or Treat: RTC Hands Out Halloween Goodies

rtmsf — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 01:15:38 +0000

It’s Halloween night across college basketball nation and all the ghouls, goblins and ghosts are out trolling for sugary goodness. Whether Gary Williams shows up on your doorstep requesting a chicken wing or it’s an exasperated Jay Bilas wearing VCU garb from head to toe, Halloween is the only night of the year where everyone can act how they really want to act if there were no social mores, norms or YouTube. With the start of the season only one week away, RTC has put together a list of five tricks and treats for some of college basketball’s most notable [...]

Are Graduation Rates and the APR Good Metrics?

mpatton — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:30:58 +0000

As you probably know, the Academic Progress Rating (APR) has made the news a lot lately largely because of a new NCAA rule that would exact postseason bans for teams not up to snuff academically (in the form of a 930 threshold score). Defending national champion Connecticut wouldn’t have made last year’s tournament with the stricter guideline and there was some speculation that the Huskies might not be allowed to defend their title as a result (this has since been resolved; the new threshold and punishments will go into effect next season).

Basketball writer Joe Giglio started tweeting North Carolina schools’ [...]

RTC Conference Primers: #30 – SWAC

rtmsf — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:34:19 +0000

For our complete list of 2011-12 conference primers working backward from #31 to #1, click here.

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Southern & Grambling APR Victims. When the NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Rate report in May, the SWAC contained two of the five basketball programs facing a postseason ban in 2011-12 as a result of consistently poor scores over several years. While this news shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed the APR since it was implemented several years ago, the teeth of the rule is finally taking hold on individual institutions. Southern and Grambling probably were not going [...]