The Lantern

Issue date: 5/7/08 Section: Campus

John Bruno

Ohio State athletics can breathe a sigh of relief - at least for now.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association released its Academic Progress Rate report Tuesday and of the 36 OSU sports detailed in the report, only one fell below the minimum score of 925 required to remain free of punishment.

Men's basketball had a composite score of 909 but will not suffer scholarship penalties after the NCAA announced it would accept the school's proposal for APR reform.

"All programs in the NCAA were offered the opportunity to submit a waiver to petition against that loss of scholarship," faculty athletics adviser John Bruno said. "And in doing so, (one must) provide an Academic Improvement Plan that the NCAA staff would look at and assess very carefully to see if you had a plan in place to move that APR score and academic performance in the right direction. We submitted such a plan on behalf of men's basketball and it was conditionally approved."

The NCAA will look closely at OSU men's basketball progress in the future to determine if growth made is sufficient. Should the committee deem OSU's progress unacceptable, the team could suffer loss of scholarship resulting from this year's APR report. How much time the Buckeyes have is unknown.

"The time period of the conditional relief was, not to my knowledge, specifically outlined," Bruno said. "We are interpreting it as meaning our APR score for next year will be scrutinized very carefully and depending upon how close we are to the benchmark we set up, they'll evaluate it at that place in time. So we're treating it as a one-year conditional waiver."

However, year-to-year progress is working in OSU's favor. The men's basketball team finished the '06-'07 year with a score of 932, which was a significant improvement from the '05-'06 total of 909.

Bruno said the NCAA specifically mentioned OSU's year-to-year growth as one reason for granting the conditional waiver.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents OSU from announcing specifics regarding which athletes are currently counting against OSU's score in most situations.

Last year Greg Oden publicly withdrew from classes past the 15th business day of the quarter - referred to as the census point - to participate in NBA Draft camps, making himself academically ineligible once he left.

Players who leave school to go professional do not count against the score if they leave in good academic standing with the school. In addition, players who transfer do not negatively impact the APR if they have a grade point average of 2.6 or higher upon their departure.

Only three of the four years reflect the men's basketball program under the watch of current coach Thad Matta. The first year included in the APR - the '03-'04 season - was the last under former coach Jim O'Brien.

Values released today include all four years of the rolling average for the first time.

"Thirty-six sports is as big an array of intercollegiate offerings as there is out there," Bruno said. "Thirty-five of our sports look very healthy. In fact, for the third year in a row we've had multiple sports identified as what we call Public Recognition Award winners."

Teams qualifying for the award by finishing in the top 10 percentile of their sport include baseball, women's basketball, women's swimming and women's cross country.

OSU's rifle team finished with an APR of 893, but will not be penalized because of a small-squad adjustment. The team had less than 30 athletes during the four-year period, qualifying them for the adjustment.

Women's cross country was the only OSU program to receive a perfect APR rating of 1,000.

Zack Timmons can be reached at timmons.60@osu.edu.

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