NCAA Releases APR Results

from lamarcardinals.com

Eleven of Lamar's 17 varsity sports maintained a 970 or higher rolling Academic Progress Rate (APR) according to the NCAA which released its annual report Wednesday afternoon.

Link to article: http://www.lamarcardinals.com/genrel/052715aaa.html

According to the article linked below, it looks like Central Arkansas men's basketball will be the only SLC team banned from 2015-16 post season play. They also moved from Level 1 penalties to Level 2 penalties.

http://www.abc3340.com/story/29170081/2015-16-apr-penalties-from-ncaa

If anyone is interested a link to the NCAA web site is below.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/academic-progress-rate-search

Attached is a link to the current year's report.

Lamar Current_apr.pdf

Huge news. I had done some calculations on this earlier, but screwed them up because I was looking at the wrong data (I was looking at the rolling four year averages instead of the yearly averages... which is one reason I struggled to make the calculations work!).

I thought we had to get to a 930 average to get out of jail; apparently, there is some sort of special dispensation for smaller schools. The four-year average of 926 is an improvement over last year's 915, and the 963 number for 2013-14 gives us a good chance of staying out of APR jail for a while, a situation which at least IMHO is vital for being able to recruit quality talent.

It looks like 3 of our 4 seniors did graduate on time, and I don't think we'll get docked if our transfers had decent grades. The big concern I've got is only Hancock appears to have latched on somewhere (W. Alabama). Hollis and Minton are still out there. (I'm a bit surprised at this. I think Hollis could help somebody, and Minton didn't look that bad as a freshman playing on a poor team). If they don't catch on with another program, we're going to lose at least three APR points next year, and we could lose more if the grades of the transferring players are weak. If we only lose the three points, we should be OK, but losing four would put us very close to danger, and losing five or more would put us in danger.

BTW, Central Arkansas APR score for 2013-14 was *696*. This means that Central Arkansas could start a team consisting exclusively of National Merit Scholars for the next three years and would still have no chance of achieving a 930 APR in the next three years. They're going to be in trouble for a *long* time. It seems a bit ridiculous, as most of the points lost are probably from their extensive turnover... which is a very different situation from one in which players are brought in who can't pass classes. Of course, this is why the whole APR thing is a joke--power conference schools can "cut" all the players they want loose and they'll always get another offer from a D-1 school, thus eliminating any penalties for transfers from power schools. But if a player leaves from a low D-1 and can't secure another chance at a four-year school, the school they left is penalized even if the player was a good student making progress toward graduation.

But for now, I'm just happy to hear that the rebuilding can continue with at least the glimmer of hope of postseason play, even though I don't think we've got much of a shot of that next year (barring Tyran winning that appeal from the NCAA for another year of eligibility, which I don't expect to see happen).