Cincinnati Basketball stripped of scholarship over grades

[Russ Smith]

Interesting story, apparently the grad rate is so low that under a new NCAA rule, they lost a scholarship. AD Nancy Zimpher says in fact their own new standards are so strict they were only able to use 10 of their 13 scholarships, kids they'd recruited that couldn't meet the standards didn't join the team.

This of course all dates back to the Bob Huggins days and ironically enough his last group of players that he recruited at UC, a whopping zero of them graduated from UC. Some transferred out(Devan Downey following Kennedy to S Carolina), some flunked out, some never got in, James White was a transfer now in the NBA. But a pretty amazing list, something like a group of 10 players he brought in AFTER the mandate from Zimpher, improve the graduation rate or else, and NONE of them graduated from UC.

 

[Skkorpion]

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just do it the way Miami does it in football -- give them all fake classes with A or B grades predetermined. Then graduate them all with bogus degrees in playground management. Problem solved.

 

[Rivercard]

Then graduate them all with bogus degrees in playground management.

Hey coach, I wondered why the frisbee kept getting bigger....then it hit me!

 

[MaoTosiFanClub]

My crystal ball tells me this will be Kansas State and USC Basketball in 2012.

 

[Russ Smith]

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just do it the way Miami does it in football -- give them all fake classes with A or B grades predetermined. Then graduate them all with bogus degrees in playground management. Problem solved.

To be fair to Huggins, part of it is semantics, or how the NCAA classifies a graduation rate. The NCAA counts only 6 years, if you graduate in 7 it doesn't count. They also don't count transfers, if a kid leaves UC and graduates Summa Cum Laude from Harvard, it doesn't count on UC's grad rate. When they show grad rates during the NCAA tournament every year, every school is using the same criteria, and for years UC's rate was 0 under Huggins.

The reason is of course, guys like tim floyd and Huggins loved to recruit huge classes and then recruit more guys next year and run off guys from last year who weren't as good. The NCAA put in the 5/8 rule(later rescinded) to curb that, and put in the graduation rate rules(the one that bit Cincy) to further discourage coaches from doing that.

So there are guys who graduated that the NCAA doesn't count. Huggins says between 99 and 03 the NCAA said his grad rate was 8%, but roughly 50% of his players actually got their degrees. Just not in 6 years or because they transferred out. He also correctly says when a kid goes to the NBA early and makes millions, do you really expect him to come back and get his degree within 6 years?

Of course that wasn't the case with the majority of his players.

K State plays Xavier tonight in Cincy which is why this story came out today of course.

To be fair clearly many student athletes are athletes first, most probably, but the reason Huggins got canned at UC was that he was told what they expected, he didn't meet it, so he got canned. That and him getting a DUI and 3 months later assistant Keith LeGree getting one of course.

But Mao is right, if USC and K State run their current programs the way Floyd and Huggins did in the past, pretty soon they're going to be losing scholarships themselves under the same rule UC did.

 

[Southpaw]

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just do it the way Miami does it in football -- give them all fake classes with A or B grades predetermined. Then graduate them all with bogus degrees in playground management. Problem solved.

Where did that come from? That is totally baseless.

 

[Skkorpion]

Where did that come from? That is totally baseless.

I'm sorry, I left out the part where they all get issued hand guns and training on how to carry them illegally until they really need to threaten somebody.

 

[Southpaw]

I'm sorry, I left out the part where they all get issued hand guns and training on how to carry them illegally until they really need to threaten somebody.

Isn't this thread about Cincinnatti?

 

[Skkorpion]

Isn't this thread about Cincinnatti?

Yes, but I was using it to yank your chain.

 

[Southpaw]

Yes, but I was using it to yank your chain.

Aha!