ORU baseball punished (Tulsa World) 5-3-2007

[ORUTerry]

ORU baseball punished

by JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer

5/3/2007

The team's academic progress rate falls short of NCAA standards.

Oral Roberts University's baseball team is one of 63 collegiate sports programs nationwide sanctioned Wednesday by the NCAA due to substandard academic progress.

For the 2007-08 academic year, ORU will lose the equivalent of 1.08 scholarships, or almost 10 percent of the NCAA limit of 11.7 scholarships for baseball.

This year's Academic Progress Rate report, which now includes three years of data, showed what NCAA president Myles Brand called an "upswing" in APR scores overall, but also showed that some schools, some programs and even some sports remain at risk.

Ralph Manning, ORU's assistant athletic director for compliance, said there were no surprises in Wednesday's report and that coach Rob Walton's baseball team had already begun planning around the scholarship loss in his current recruiting efforts for next year's team.

ORU's sanction is the result of two factors:

The team's APR (836) remained below the 925 cutoff mark for the three-academic-year period of 2003-06. A built-in adjustment for smaller-than-normal squads (a component to be discarded next year after four years of data is compiled) helps keep most sub-925 teams out of trouble (ORU's two-year score was 810, but did not bring penalty).

What drew the penalty, on top of the low APR, was the departure of two players who were academically ineligible.

The APR formula is based on academic eligibility and retention / graduation -- one point per semester for each student-athlete who is academically eligible and one point per semester for each student-athlete who comes back for the next semester or graduates. Those numbers are then computed into a percentage to produce the APR.

So for every student-athlete a program loses who does not leave in good academic standing, the program receives an "0-for-2." For programs whose APR is already below 925, that means the loss of one scholarship per "0-for-2." In equivalency sports, such as baseball, the maximum penalty is 10 percent of the limit.

Oklahoma State's baseball team, for example, lost the maximum 1.17 scholarships last year.

The nature of college baseball -- a high percentage of transfers in and out, and underclassmen who are drafted -- doesn't lend itself to strong APRs (although the liberal transfer rule was recently stiffened to force Division I transfers to sit out).

ORU's team last year lost 11 of its 27 underclassmen. But only two departed without gaining their eligibility in the spring.

"Of the two kids we lost this last year that penalized us, one (catcher Andy Bouchie) signed a pro contract," Manning said. "He came in (from junior college) a little bit behind on his hours . . . and after he signed that pro contract, you just don't have a handle on them to take summer school to meet that APR issue. I mean, they're gone.

"The other was a young man who probably just got in here and found out D-1 was a little bit above him and just transferred to junior college in order to play. He had told us he was one class short of meeting his eligibility requirements and told us he would take that class during the summer. But he was gone, and we don't have a handle on control of him at that point, and he didn't do it. So it cost us a scholarship."

In Oklahoma State's case, an emphasis on ensuring junior college transfers had attained the proper course load before arriving on campus helped raise the baseball team's APR from 812 last year (with two years of data) to 852 this year (with three years), so the Cowboys will get their lost scholarship back next year.

OSU assistant athletic director for compliance Scott Williams said the baseball team's 2005-06 APR was "well above 925," and added, "I don't foresee APR continuing to be an issue with our baseball program. Not with this current staff and their understanding."

Also, Williams said, "we didn't have any 0-for-2s."

Manning said ORU has already taken similar steps, and predicts future APR scores will be "dramatically better."

"Some of those kids we bring in, we're making sure we send 'em to summer school up front, and before they come to ORU, we're evaluating and trying to get their summer school hours before they come so they can get caught up with the percentage requirements," Manning said.

"I think our coaches are being very proactive right now to improving our APR numbers so we can get them back up there out of the danger area."

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John E. Hoover 581-8384

john.hoover@tulsaworld.com

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Next year several teams may have low APRs

According to the NCAA's annual Academic Progress Rate report on Wednesday, 44 percent of men's basketball teams, 40 percent of football teams and 35 percent of baseball teams would have posted APRs below 925 and possibly lost scholarships without this year's adjustment for squad size. That adjustment will be taken out of the equation for the 2007-08 academic year.

Sixty-three teams -- including the ORU baseball team -- were sanctioned with the one-year loss of scholarships, known as contemporaneous penalties.

Thirty-one teams received a warning letter from the NCAA for posting a three-year average APR below 900. If those scores don't climb above 900 next year, more severe penalties, known as historical penalties -- including loss of scholarships, reduction in playing and practice time, and eventually a postseason ban -- could ensue.

[Bogus Smith]

APR Report Shows Some Good News For Baseball

Posted May. 2, 2007 2:24 pm by John Manuel

Filed under: Around The Nation

The NCAA released its Academic Progress Report this afternoon, and six baseball programs had scores low enough to merit the maximum scholarship penalty of losing 10 percent of their scholarships. For a complete list of the programs penalized, go here.

The six programs that will be limited to 10 rather than 11.7 scholarships starting next year are Fresno State, New Mexico, Temple, Texas-Arlington, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Texas Tech. Several other schools have to cough up more than one scholarship, including Oral Roberts (1.06), Lipscomb (1.10) and Florida International (1.12). In all, 27 schools either saw scholarships reduced (20 in all, some by as little as .05 scholarships) or were publicly reprimanded (seven).

As expected, baseball didn?t perform well compared to other sports. Only football, with 47 programs scoring below the 925 cutoff (on a 0-1,000 scale), was worse than baseball?s 46 programs when squad-size adjustments were made. And baseball had more teams (20) that scored below 900 than any other sport?including football?with Texas Tech scoring the lowest at 839. Baseball?s three-year average as a whole was 934, just edging football (931) and basketball (927) but still ranking third-worst among all sports.

However, the news was better for baseball than expected. The sport made progress, as last year 10 programs, including Texas, were penalized the full 1.17 scholarships, and 71 schools fell below the cut line, compared to 27 this year. Also, last year?s baseball-wide average was 931, and that score was 922 in 2005.

So baseball has shown modest progress. The sport presents challenges unique among college sports, from the baseball draft to summer leagues, that the NCAA has failed to recognize or appreciate when meting out APR penalties. But on its own, college baseball has improved in this measure of academic progress?which shouldn?t be the only measure (coaches point out that baseball teams regularly score highly when ranked by GPA, rather than graduation rates).

But APR is the measure that counts these days, and it?s the measure that?s changing the sport as Aaron Fitt wrote Monday in Strike Two. As Mississippi State coach Ron Polk said Tuesday, ?We would solve the APR problem ourselves if given the time. If the NCAA would have given us a couple of years, we would have fixed it ourselves.?

The data shows the dramatic improvement Polk talks about. But the NCAA did not wait. Still, NCAA president Myles Brand singled out baseball?s improvement in his official statement on the APR news.

?We have realized improvement in some of the areas that needed it,? Brand said in an official statement. ?Football is up?that?s good. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise, though, is in baseball, which is up significantly. It?s not perfect?we?re still not where we want to be in men?s basketball. We have a lot of work to do there and it?s going to be a challenge.?