Kentucky Basketball: Basketball GPA Circles the Drain

Makes it a little more evident why Bledsoe and Orton wouldn’t want to stick around, since they wouldn’t be eligible anyways. I guess that means I’m assuming that Hood and Cousins weren’t the goats here…but I think its more likely it was Bledsoe and Orton.
Its a difficult thing to deal with – myself, as a freshman, I had one of my worst semesters in college. Add to that the distractions of being a big-time basketball icon at a school like Kentucky, and I can see how the distractions can get overwhelming. Still, most first-year athletes take pretty vanilla classes and have plenty of opportunity for tutoring, so its not that good of an excuse.

nothing to see here. the current number represent the changeover in staff and ncaa policy requiring six hours in spring (and UK’s slow adjustment to the curve)

i like the apr approach as well, especially since it is real time. no fuss no muss.

moot point next may 2. numbers will be different. better.

someone is always looking for a way to put baby in the corner

worthwhile discussing…..

From article about girls having higher grad rates…..on why women typically do better than men in academics, “…they don’t have the fantasy of pro sports.”

Boys get so caught up in the fantasy of pro ball that they lose the reality of an education and what it can do for you outside of sports. The fantasy is helped along by “friends” or “uncles” or even the idea of having “fans” to your FANtasy. Easy to see how the idea of solidifying your education with a free ride to college and doing well in school isn’t valued and when kids show up on campus and a higher level of participation in the classroom they get sticker shock.

Many of these elite kids don’t have much else but their talent and a bunch of dreamers who believe that that talent will take em all to the promised land.

On the flip side, is it fair to females that they don’t have the same opportunities to come from a crap background and hit the “lottery” based on her talent and practice? is it fair that they don’t get to dream about PLAYING professionally? cause that what’s this is all about….playing a game. don’t girls have just as much right to dreams as boys?

Sit with that for a while.

I guess Big Cuz was right!

we need to get better at this…..nuff said.

… makes a cogent point:

On the UK team GPA story. Calipari made it a story when he bragged about GPAs earlier in year. Cant then complain when low ones are shown

the big deal is that this plays right into the argument that players are using UK as a temporary waypoint on the way to the NBA, and that academics are not a serious concern of either the University or the players at Kentucky.

This worries me, and is my main concern about one and dones.

Proud of you!
Someone explain the six hour thing.Is that just two three hour courses, or three two hour courses? When I went to college you had to take twelve hours to be a full time student.
Please explain.

is a lot of conclusions based on incomplete evidence. The easy assumption is that the one and dones skipped out on classwork but we know that at least one did not. We also know that Liggins sat out for a long time for an undisclosed reason, might have been classroom related. While it is a high likelihood that the kids who are leaving are not concerned about grades, we don’t know for sure that some of the problem is with the ones still here.

That’s all that matters to me.

Will Todd and Barnhart have a serious discussion with Calipari about this or hope it goes away and hides?

Take another look at the graph from one of the links above or click
http://media.kentucky.com/smedia/2010/05/02/06/100502GPAcharts.source.prod_affiliate.79.pdf
to save some mousework.

Yes, the trend continued in the fall of this school year; but, it began in ’07.
This bus was headed south long before Cal took over and brought in his first class.

Hopefully the Spring semester will reverse this trend.
Doubtful, though. Orton went mail-order school on us and Cousins has already left. Couple that with all the distractions from January on….

Of course grades are important, but I think you have to take into account the young students on the team. Five freshman, a juco transfer and a couple sophomores. Being a student is a skill just as being an athlete and when you make the jump up to the next level there’s a learning curve. Speaking for myself, my grades improved with every semester. It wasn’t because I was working harder. It was because I became a more efficient and perceptive student as time went by and as a result, my efforts were better focused. I don’t know why it would be any different for these kids.

We know for a fact that this was not ALL the freshmen as Sandy Bell has stated, the bad grades were from bottom to top across all classes. Now, only having some of those kids in class from September to March may have been a contributing factor, it may not. But I seem to remember several of the guys coming in early and starting summer school and doing other things to get ahead, AND to get eligible. We had a very bad year GPA-wise. It happens. We correct the problem, pay closer attention to it from now on and move on.

We know for a fact that John Wall led the team in GPA at least one semester, we also know that at least 2 players had under a 1.8. Let Sandy Bell take care of this with Calipari, get the tutors into high gear immediately and let Brandon Knight bring our GPA back up along with our title hopes when he arrives. I think that this will correct itself now that so much fuss has been made by everyone concerned.

Academics are, according to some on this blog, crucial. They are, according to some on this blog, a necessary checkpoint for these kids. And they are, according to some on this blog, simply something that must be dealt with to remain in the good graces of the NCAA. We are putting the cart so far behind the horse here it isnt even funny. We can either recruit straight A students, or acceptable students, or students that need to be dragged through the entire college experience. It seems to me we have recruited all of the above, as it should be. Everyone has an opinion and most opinions have no basis in fact. Let’s just fix it and move on.

For some of these guys, getting an atheletic scholarship was the only way they were ever going to see the inside of a college classroom. For some of them, they did what they had to do in order to meet their goal of playing professional basketball as required by the NCAA and never had any desire to be inside a college classroom.

Oh well. Next.

have it both ways. You just cannot. Its the same concept of “we are going to have to be aware that with these blue chips that are recruited, there comes a distinct chance that a situation like Marcus Camby or OJ Mayo could come about”………won’t be Calipari’s fault but this is what you get with the blue chips. These kids are pro players and don’t care about GPA………so for Todd to say “I am disappointed” just baffles me. Yall want to “reload” every year with blue chips……..then be sure this will be a norm. Don’t complain…..you cannot have your cake and eat it oo.

all your remarks. First to Tru, I respest your points. I also respect everyone elses points. This is not a new problem. I have been following UK for many years. We have had players to not make their grades before. Some were not even allowed to play until they proved they could pass. This is not some phenom that just reared it’s head. That said, I wish all young people were super smart like the rest of us! :-) Most young athletes care more about their sport than “anything” When I was in school and I expect now also, some of these kids were given a pass just because they were jocks. This did them no favor but it happened. Now I want to say that undoubtedly these young men were eligible under the rules. What are we talking about? They came to play ball, They did their job. Move on!

It’s probably not far from the truth with most jocks. People can act shocked but in the real world they only came to play!

Wonder how this news it going to play with the mother’s of pending Kentucky recruits? Unless your a John Wall, a sure thing, will they want their son hanging 95{ of their time with others who seem to have taken the education process a little lightly?

You seem to be a some what read person. I would be very surprised if Momma is that dumb about jocks in general. If she has raised one she knows them. Some young men want an education because they will need it. It seems that the one and done won’t ever need college smarts.We are going to see a lot of this in the years to come. If that son spends "95% of his time with the one and done crowd “He might become one also” It happened right in front of our eyes this last year.

But we should also educate that talent as well as we can while they are with us. That, in essence, is a mandate. We offer them a scholarship, not a paid AAU year. I think that this will get better. Is it because it’s Cal’s first year? Of an incomplete reporting??(the year isn’t over yet – assignments that were missed during the season could still be turned in) etc.

None the less, Tru is right to bring attention to this. We are gonna get heat for bringing in the one-and-dones.

If we’re gonna take the heat, let’s do it right and show them, that to earn that paycheck, they gotta do the work. In the league, there’s a ton of off-court things to deal with, if they can’t keep a passing grade in school; then they won’t cut it off-court in the league either where there will be tons of off-court opportunities and distractions. Even more importantly, they will be throwing away the year or two that they spend here, where they could come back and finish that degree.