Has the Sporting News turned into the Onion?
Kentucky's academic performance puts lie to criticism http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/story/2014-05-14/kentuckys-academic-performance-makes-liars-out-of-critics-ncaa-basketball-apr-releaseThere are some lies in sports that are kept rather busy, but the one that seems to hang around college basketball most persistently is this: that Kentucky is employing a band of athletes who only need to pass a few fall credits and then don’t even have to go to class in the spring.
False.
It’s been false since John Calipari’s first season on the job in 2009-10, and it’s remained false every year since. How do we know?
UK basketball’s score under the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate measurement is a perfect 1,000 for the 2012-13 academic year and 989 on a multiyear basis.
The APR has a lot of flaws, but one of its values is in punishing any program that has an overabundance of one-semester players — guys who show up, pass a few fall credits and then not even go to class in the spring. The APR mandates than any player departing for the NBA Draft must do so while in good academic standing or be damaging to the program’s cumulative score — and that means completing a semester once the player is enrolled.
Programs that are sufficiently damaged can lose scholarships, practice time or postseason eligibility, which happened to the Connecticut program in 2012-13.
In fact, eight Division I basketball programs will be banned from postseason play in 2015 because of deficient APR scores: Alabama State, Appalachian State, Florida A&M, Houston Baptist, Lamar, Milwaukee, San Jose State and Central Arkansas. Milwaukee made the field last season as champion of the Horizon League.
Kentucky will have no such concerns, even though it lost five players to early NBA Draft entry in 2012 and two in 2013, including five “one-and-done” players. The Wildcats have managed to get it done academically with those prospects while they’ve been on campus.
It’d be nice if these numbers at least put to rest the notion that Kentucky players are taking shortcuts during the time they spend on campus, whether that time lasts one year (Anthony Davis), two (the Harrison twins), three (Willie Cauley-Stein) or four (Darius Miller).
“Ten years ago, the membership designed the APR to encourage student-athletes to stay in school and earn good grades. We are pleased to see that more and more student-athletes are doing that every year,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said.
You think he knew he was talking about Kentucky when he said it?
