As the record-breaking summer heat wears on (at least here in DC), AU Hoops news is starting to pick up a little as well. A few choice pieces for today to help everyone through these barren basketball months.First on tap is the June 23rd announcement that a Patriot League-high seven men's basketball players were named to the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll. This includes Riley Grafft's magna cum laude-range 3.75 GPA and sharpshooter Joe Hill's 3.5 GPA. This tops last year's six Academic Honor Roll selections, which also lead the League, and adds to our grand total of 41 selections since joining the Patriot League in the 2001-2002 season...another League-leading total.
While the fact that roughly half of our team has a GPA that most Division 1 basketball players can only dream about is commendable, and each should be congratulated for representing our school so well both on the court and in the classroom, this is an ample opportunity to yet again...beat Holy Cross. If you take a gander at the comments from my February 17th post, a few unruly Holy Cross fans tried to...uh...downplay...the academic achievements of our players using some woefully outdated data. Well, I hope a quick gander at the League's Academic Honor Roll sets them straight.
As that cool, refreshing news sinks in, check out what recently showed up on the BB&T Classic website:
If my eyes serve me correctly, it looks like the BB&T is going back up to six teams this year in a triple-header (four schools participated in 2008 and 2009). As has been pointed out on this blog before by our excellent readers, we're matched up against the Florida Gators as they creatively fulfill their home-and-home agreement with us, while GW faces Navy and Maryland takes on the Owls of Temple University. Ideally, I'd love to see us knock off a Florida squad that should, by all means, be ranked in the Top 25 before the season even begins. While I stop daydreaming, it's realistic that Navy could pull off an upset over the Colonials (I'll take a GW loss to a Patriot League squad any day), and if Temple maintains even some of the magic from last season, Vasquez-less Maryland might be in for a real fight.
That's all for now. Keep following us this summer as we begin to roll out some of the great new features for AUHoops.com Season 2.
Pro Deo Et Patria,
Josh
This is great news for the program and the school. I look forward to attending.
ReplyDelete-Joe
Looking forward to seeing you there!
ReplyDeleteStupid comment about the GPA's.. Everyone knows AU has the lowest standards for admission in the Patriot League. So it is obvious that is is easier to get a 3.2+ GPA when you are competing against mediocre students.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the new NCAA graduation stats still show that AU is dead last by a huge margin.
Okay, let's break down some numbers.
ReplyDeleteIn my February 17th post, both Graduation Success Rate (GSR) and Academic Progress Rate (APR) statistics were reported as being "dead last in the Patriot League" by an anonymous commenter.
According to the APR, which was last updated June 4th of this year and uses data from the past 4 academic years (2005-2006 - 2008-2009), AU's APR for men's basketball is 981/1000. This ties with Colgate and Lafayette, is ahead of Army, and is a single point behind Navy. Only Lehigh, Holy Cross, and Bucknell are higher, and of course we're still talking about less than a 20 point spread among all League schools.
As for the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), this has two numbers. The first does not account for transfers, while the second (called the Federal rate) does. In the 2008 GSR, our numbers were 100%/57%. In the 2009 GSR, which is the latest, our numbers are 50%/14%. Why the huge, sudden difference? Well, the 2008 statistic uses data from 1998-2001. The 2009 statistic uses data from 1999-2002. What happened here? Oh yeah, AU switched conferences (and got a new coach), and was shut out of postseason play for a year by the CAA as a punishment for bailing. So, it might be understandable that during that one year there was a bit of discord among the team. Furthermore, in both of these years very few players actually entered while AU was a member of the Patriot League. Frankly, this data is quite old, and updated, relevant data will not be out for a while. So if you want data that can actually be compared to the rest of the Patriot League, you'll either have to wait a few years or refer to the APR (above). What do I remember from recent years? How about graduating 7/7 seniors in 2009 who went to the NCAA tournament twice?
Conclusion - AU is hardly "dead last in the League", especially when using recent numbers. We graduate every single men's basketball athlete, except for those who transfer (and in a sport where the entire team is 15 players, just a few transfers make a big impact on the statistics). While we certainly may not be on top, we are very competitive with all seven other League institutions.
As for the comment about AU students being "mediocre" compared to the other League schools, that's just an opinion - many of our basketball players major in business (as opposed to, say, sociology), which is not a "mediocre" major at AU by a long shot. Just throwing it out there, the Dean of AU's business school used to hold that same position at Lehigh. Finally, no matter where a student attends school, achieving a GPA above 3.2 while enduring the rigors of a Division 1 basketball program is impressive. The fact that so many of our students can do it - without academic scandal or leniency - is impressive.
You can't argue with the numbers.
APR (Patriot League): http://web1.ncaa.org/maps/aprRelease.jsp
APR (AU): http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/apr2009/342_2009_apr.pdf
GSR (2008): http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/gsr2008/23.pdf
GSR (2009): http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/nH8egsr2009/23.pdf