(Keep in mind, this was published before the KSPR exclusive on the football player arrest. Please read as so.)
By now, you’ve probably heard about Missouri State’s troubles with something called the APR, and how the basketball team lost a scholarship and the football team is going to lose a few. I’m not going to lie, even though I’d been to the press conference, when I read the front of the News-Leader, it looked ominous.
Is it time to panic? Is Cuonzo Martin a bad guy? What about Terry Allen? Villains? Did all the momentum both programs just built, vanish with one NCAA notice?
Not a chance.
Is this embarrassing for MSU’s athletic programs? Slightly. Is it a black eye? Not really. It’s sort of the yellowish, pinkish discoloration that comes after a bruise. Mostly because it’s the school’s first type of NCAA sanctions, but also offers a valuable lesson to all involved, including the fans and the media.
First of all, let’s recap what the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate is, and how MSU failed to reach the number. The NCAA says the APR, which was conceived in 2003, is a way to track the academic achievement of Division I teams during each academic term, using a four-year average to track graduation progress. There is a grade aspect to it, but it’s more focused on being eligible than GPA, and the main issue is following players who join the program as they head toward graduation.
There is a formula that is in play, giving schools one point for staying in school and another for being academically eligible each semester, totaling four points per player. To find the APR, a team’s total points are divided by the points possible and multipled by 1,000. Teams that fall below the minimum APR score of 925 for a four-year average are subject to possible sanctions. Schools like MSU can apply for a waiver status that gives them clemency for future scores under the 925 mark, as long as they are showing progress. MSU has started that process. If you want to see the plans, here is the one for basketball and here is the one for football.
MSU AD Kyle Moats
Missouri State Athletic Director Kyle Moats said he was contacted a few months ago that the two programs might be in line for APR trouble. Wednesday, Moats and MSU went forward with the news that the Bears’ basketball team and the football team would lose potential scholarships. MSU’s other 14 athletic programs cleared 925.
“From this point on, we will try to do better and we will do better,” he said. “It’s something that we’re not proud of … We’re not happy about it, but we have to move on.”
Moats said since the football team operated below the maximum of 63 scholarships this season, the 2.83 scholarship penalty has already been served. While both programs have submitted improvement plans to the NCAA, this allows us to focus on the basketball team, which lost the one scholarship for the 2011-12 season.
Thanks to MSU SID Rick Kindhart, here are MSU’s basketball APRs totals since 2003:
- 2003-04 — 946 (53/56)
- 2004-05 — 1000 (51/52 + 1 bonus)
- 2005-06 — 962 (50/52)
- 2006-07 — 920 (46/50)
- 2007-08 — 885 (46/52)
- 2008-09 — 865 (45/52)
That’s where the 908 comes in. It’s an average of the last four years, and you can see how it’s trending downward. Since it’s not purely a grade issue, there will eventually be little to worry about if the future generations of Bears make their grades. As it turns out, it’s likely a combination of the coaching change from Barry Hinson to Martin. While some of Hinson’s players left (David Cline and Tomas Brock), some that Martin recruited aren’t here any longer, either.
Remember Deron Hobbs? Gone. John Hayward-Mayhew? Vanished. That’s part of where that 865 number came from. We can’t completely reconstruct the number because of FERPA laws, but we can extrapolate how something like this could happen, seeing as how all four of Martin’s freshman that were recruited for the 2008-09 season are no longer with the team. That’s Part 1 of the lesson: Be careful who you recruit, regardless of desperation.
Still, this isn’t the time to kill the guy. Martin had virtually no choice. With any coaching change, there are going to be roster defections. Same as in any sport, including Terry Allen’s football team. And when Martin tried to fill in the roster, it just turns out it was a combination of guys who were either not interested in staying with the school or guys who weren’t good enough to play and saw the writing on the wall. Did they have questionable character? That’s tough for us to decide, and only Martin knows if he could have forecasted that. And on their way out, those players must have blown off school, or left campus altogether. I wouldn’t be surprised to see if the NCAA makes changes to this rule, because of the vulnerability it leaves the schools in.
Another question I had was, how common is this? Moats said he wasn’t sure how many programs went through this yearly. When I looked, there wasn’t any correlation data that I could find between APR and coaching changes. I was able to find every program that failed to meet the APR last season and there were 25 schools that had the same thing happen to them in 2008-09. (Note, 2009-10′s list hasn’t been released.)
Sure, Cuonzo Martin was at Purdue when it had APR problems. Purdue says it's purely a coincidence.
Here is the list from 2008-09: Auburn, Ball State, Delaware State, George Washington, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Indiana, IUPUI, Kennesaw State, Morgan State, Oral Roberts, Pepperdine, Purdue, Southeast Missouri State, Southern Utah, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Ohio State, Colorado, Illinois-Chicago, San Francisco, South Carolina, Tennessee-Chattanooga, Tennesse-Martin, Tennessee and Western Illinois.
If you scanned that close enough, you’d find Purdue on the list. Yes, that’s right, Martin’s former school got dinged for a scholarship, too. After a call to Purdue, you’ll be relieved to see that it was merely a coincidence, not an indictment on Martin’s recruiting character.
After pointing me to this press release from 2009, Purdue SID Tom Schott told me that it had something to do with a player that came in and left, putting the Boilermakers over the edge. It was an isolated incident that tilted the scales, which were teetering close to 925.
“While the APR has some good points to it, losing one or two kids can be detrimental,” Schott said. “Just because (Martin) was at both schools doesn’t mean he had anything to do with either problem.”
Martin wasn’t made available to comment, which is unfortunate, because I wanted to get his feelings on how this lack of a scholarship would hurt the Bears and his current recruiting. However, it’s possible to assume this could have been much worse. The team will only operate with 12 scholarships for the 2011-12 season, but with five seniors graduating from the 2010-11 team, still having four to count on would be much worse than having a one- or two-member recruiting class.
Martin only offered up this written statement to the media, handed out by Kindhart:
“We take the commitment to academic success seriously and that is a major priority in our program. The accountability of our program starts and ends with me,” Martin said. “The improvement plan outlined by the NCAA and the support system at Missouri State gives us the tools we need to meet our goals, and we will do everything in our power to get there.”
In all, I hope the fans — and the rest of the media — recognize this isn’t the end of the world. The end of the world would be if this happens again, which isn’t likely. Think about this year’s team. It’s possible they get a near perfect score, right? Everyone should return and should be eligible. Don’t get caught up in the hype of hearing the following collage of words:
- Loss
- Scholarships
- Grades
Is the biggest program in town losing a scholarship that could help them become the next Butler? Yes. Were they going to be the next Butler with that scholarship? Probably not. Is this a perfect storm of a coaching change and a screwy NCAA rule? Yes. Watch who you recruit, but I feel like Martin, and Allen to a certain degree, are already doing that.
Now, they’ll just watch closer. Maybe we all will.
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