UCONN wins Chutzpah award

Fearing that academic issues will prevent its men's basketball team from being eligible for the NCAA Tournament in 2013, the University of Connecticut is seeking a waiver from the NCAA.

Connecticut, the defending NCAA champions, offered to self-impose penalties on the program if the NCAA grants its request.

The school offered to reduce the amount of games next season by four games and forfeit its share of revenue generated by Big East Conference schools that advance to the NCAA Tournament.

Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun would also be banned from visiting potential recruits during the fall contact period.

Last year, the school learned it would lost two scholarships for next season due to a poor Academic Performance Rating.

The NCAA uses the APR to measure the academic performance of all Division I student-athletes. The school's four-year rating is 893, below the required 925 minimum.

UConn has already lost one scholarship for next season as a result of NCAA recruiting violations.

So, the self imposed penalty Uconn wants is for the Big East to lose the NCAA revenue a Uconn appearance would earn.


Recall that this is a program that has barely graduated anyone this millennium.

Regardless of what others may think of Michele Bachmann’s pronunciation of Chutzpah, the NCAA apparently cared for UConn’s even less.

From Associated Press:

The UConn men's basketball team likely will be banned from participating in the 2013 NCAA tournament after its waiver was denied Friday.

After the NCAA ruled that the Connecticut Huskies couldn't participate in the 2013 tournament last month due to substandard academics, UConn appealed the decision. Friday, the news came down that the appeal would be denied, meaning, barring an unforeseen scenario, UConn won't be participating in March Madness next season.
Under its bi-laws, the NCAA requires schools to post a two-year Academic Progress Rate of at least 930 or a four-year average of 900, neither of which UConn is expected to meet after the numbers were calculated from last academic year. An 826 rating in the 2009-2010 season — the year before the Huskies won the Big East and national championships — doomed next year's postseason chances, despite posting an expected 975 rating last season.

Finally, the NCAA takes a stand and follows through:

UConn appeal for postseason waiver has been rejected, school says!

I guess they should try going to class now... That's all that is left for them to try.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/05/us/connecticut-basketball-tournament-ban/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Now the NCAA is looking at requiring a 2.3 minimum GPA from high school along with a set "core curriculum" that students would have to fulfill to be D-I athletes. What if student-athletes actually had to be students at some of these larger universities?

ESPN Story

Apparently UConn Coach Jim Calhoun will announce his retirement tomorrow. A good guy and a good coach, it’s too bad that in the winter of his career he had run-ins with the NCAA for “failure to maintain an atmosphere of compliance."

Calhoun also steps away on the brink of his team being ineligible for the 2013 postseason because of low APR scores. It cannot play in the Big East or any other postseason tournament at the end of the upcoming season.

Probably was time from Calhoun to retire; it’s too bad he’ll be largely remembered for his later years at UConn.

If by later years, you mean every year the Feds have been tracking graduation success rate, well, then yeah, it's a shame.


They started tracking GSR in 1998 and the current numbers run through 2004, under the assumption, I guess, that there is some dim hope more recent players might get a degree.

Here are Calhoun's numbers. the years are when players entered college.

1998...33%. His all time high.
1999...18%
2000...20%
2001...25%
2002...14%
2003...14%
2004...8%

I have pretty good confidence that the numbers didn't get better since then. That probably means UCONN graduated fewer than 10 players who started playing in this millennium. Possibly as few as 5, if you count incoming classes as 4 to 7 players.

Yet it took the NCAA until two years ago for the NCAA to do anything about it, and UCONN didn't seem to care either. Shame on Calhoun, and shame on those institutions of higher "learning".

Yea, don’t get me wrong, I personally never liked the guy because it always seemed he was putting himself and basketball over the kids, the university, and academics.

He's leaving a mess behind bigger than the glare from his three national-championship rings, which reminds me -- the guy was one helluva basketball coach….but it’s fair to ask, “How ethical were those wins?” I think only Wooden (10), Krzyzewski (4), Rupp (4), and Knight (3) have as many championships. He won three NCAA tournaments with three completely different cores, the first led by Rip Hamilton, the next by Emeka Okafor, the last by Kemba Walker.

But I agree he is also a bully who apparently didn't demand the same type of excellence in the classroom from his players that he demanded on the court. He’s a rule-breaker who left a program on probation, banned from the NCAA tournament and without the kind of talent necessary to compete in the Big East.

He really is leaving behind a mess.

Speaking of contested titles... Duke has their own issues to deal with now too with their last title run:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/blog/_/name/katz_andy/id/8370027/next-duke-ncaa-lance-thomas-case-men-college-basketball

So if that gets vacated... Does that mean Butler gets the title???

(Sorry for the tangent)

DaTruRochin wrote:

So if that gets vacated... Does that mean Butler gets the title???

(Sorry for the tangent)

In the only previous precedent, the NCAA lists the 2008 Memhis team as champions, with an asterisk and the explanation "later vacated"

No new champion was listed.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/2012/DI.pdf


This would seem to run counter to the official NCAA policy that games and records are supposed to be expunged from both the NCAA records and the records of the violating school.

DaTruRochin wrote:Speaking of contested titles... Duke has their own issues to deal with now too with their last title run:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/blog/_/name/katz_andy/id/8370027/next-duke-ncaa-lance-thomas-case-men-college-basketball

That is a LOT of bling.

Lot's of problems at big-time bball programs this week. Remember Tyler Hansbrough of UNC fame? The school hired his mother as a fund-raiser in his senior year. Now she has "resigned" for expensing personal trips to see her other son play at ND. tyler-hansbrough-mother-resigns-unc-fundraiser

As much as I agree with the fact that players should not be ditching class or using their "stardom" to acquire fancy things, I do not think it is fair to those at Memphis or at Duke that had no part in the wrongdoings to have to vacate their titles. I understand the NCAA's "ineligible player" but I feel like people do not generally know about players receiving benefits at the time that they happen. These were not SMU cases.

It isn't so much that it isn't fair to the players on the Duke/UConn/Memphis squad, as it is completely unfair to all the other teams that they beat who WERE following the rules. (And as for memphis... Derrick Rose isn't on that team? NO way they make the final four.) Fact of the matter is, they get a huge advantage by not complying.

Players not having to go to class and just focus on basketball have an insurmountable advantage over players who have to take a compliant course load AND pass/graduate. The fact that not all the players on a team met the goal is kind of silly, I mean in the UConn case... 1/3 or less of the players graduated every year, sorry, but if 66% or more of the team isn't going to class, that whole team deserves to be punished.

The Duke case isn't nearly as egregious as the UConn one obviously, but when a STARTER is the one that isn't complying? It's up to the school to instruct, monitor and report their players, they flat out didn't do that. And it isn't like you don't notice someone wearing $100K in jewelry. The school dropped the ball, and by doing that gained an advantage over teams that prevented their players from doing so. The school doesn't follow the rules, why should they be able to celebrate a victory if it is tainted?

up7587 wrote:

DaTruRochin wrote:Speaking of contested titles... Duke has their own issues to deal with now too with their last title run:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/blog/_/name/katz_andy/id/8370027/next-duke-ncaa-lance-thomas-case-men-college-basketball

That is a LOT of bling.

Lot's of problems at big-time bball programs this week. Remember Tyler Hansbrough of UNC fame? The school hired his mother as a fund-raiser in his senior year. Now she has "resigned" for expensing personal trips to see her other son play at ND. tyler-hansbrough-mother-resigns-unc-fundraiser

You don't have to look far afield. Even in women's basketball locally, the same stuff happened.

Remember Oregon City's fixture Brad Smith went to Vanderbuilt as an assistant when his daughter Ashley was recruited?

None of this stuff is a mystery. People just ignore it.

Hahaha but did Brad carry on a lurid affair with the vice chancellor of university advancement (that hired him) on the university dime?

This is September, when college basketball is never seen and seldom heard. So, just to summarize the past few days:

1) Notre Dame suddenly shows up in the ACC. But not as one of the really big guys in men’s basketball, yet. When it comes to past national championships, the Irish might as well be Clemson.

2) Jim Calhoun retires. Not that anyone can be shocked. Still, Sept. 13 is not the most common retirement date for a college basketball coach, and it's a scary new world at Connecticut, since Calhoun has meant to that program what Colonel Sanders meant to fried chicken.

3) Brad Stevens kicked off a starter at Butler. Butler? Nobody gets in trouble at Butler, except someone just did. Guard Chrishawn Hopkins.

4) An academic scandal at Harvard. Reports in Boston say it is something about students sharing answers in an exam for the course, "Introduction to Congress." Hmm, they may have cut a few ethical corners. Can you think of a better way to get introduced to Congress?

5) Then there is the really intriguing one. When's the last time anyone found the phrases "Duke Basketball" and "NCAA investigators" in the same sentence? So, did Lance Thomas go on a $100,000 shopping spree for jewelry in December 2009 after beating Gonzaga?

Practice begins in four weeks….I can’t wait to hear the sound of the squeaking shoes and bouncing balls on the hardwood. It won’t make all this other garbage go away, but it will at least put the “sport” back in basketball…for awhile.

Here's a good (for) UConn story from today:

The #2 UConn women's basketball team went to Stanfod to play the #1 Cardinal today and litteraly blew them out of the building 61-35.

The Husky women played spoiler and streak-buster at the same time, snapping Stanford's nation-leading 82-game home unbeaten run with the surprisingly easy rout.

Stanford had not lost at home in five full seasons....

Connecticut's men's basketball team, which was barred from the 2013 postseason because of past problems with its Academic Progress Rate, has qualified academically for next year's NCAA tournament.

The Huskies APR for the 2011-12 school year is 947 out of 1000, giving it a two-year score of 962.5, which meets the NCAA's standard.

Under rules implemented in 2011, the NCAA requires a team to have a 900 average over four years or a 930 over two years to qualify for its postseason.

The team's four-year APR of 897 is still lower than the NCAA goal.

The team scored a 978 out of 1000 in 2010-11, the season it won its third NCAA Championship, after two years of scores in the low 800s.