NCAA docked USC two basketball scholarships
USC BASKETBALL
The Trojans program took the penalty in 2007-08 and were given a formal warning because of poor academic performance; other local programs face similar sanctions.
The USC men's basketball team was the only major athletic program in the Southland penalized with scholarship losses as the result of a poor performance in the NCAA's academic progress rate, according to information released Tuesday.
The Trojans lost two scholarships and were issued a formal warning after achieving a four-year APR score of 863, which was below the minimum acceptable threshold of 925. The minimum figure equates to a graduation rate of about 60%.
The academic data was collected from 2003-07 and measures student-athlete performance based on eligibility and retention. Nationally, 700 of 6,272 Division I teams fell short of the minimum score, 174 teams were penalized with scholarship losses and 44 others were issued warning letters.
Teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 900 in three consecutive seasons could be banned from the postseason, and a fourth consecutive offense could result in banishment from Division I competition.
Among the 26 programs at the brink of a postseason ban are the football teams at San Jose State, Southern and Temple, and the men's basketball teams at New Mexico, Centenary and East Carolina.
USC chose to accept its penalty during the 2007-08 basketball season after being informed by the NCAA last fall that it faced scholarship losses, said associate athletic director Magdi El Shahawy. The Trojans had the option to defer the penalty until next season.
The Trojans were penalized in part because Lodrick Stewart, Nick Young and Gabe Pruitt stopped attending class after USC lost in the Round of 16 in the 2007 NCAA tournament, a high-ranking school official with knowledge of the situation said. The official would speak only anonymously because of the confidentiality of academic records. The midseason transfers of Jeremy Barr, Kevin Galloway and Sead Odzic also hurt the team's APR.
"I knew that this was a possibility when I took the job and that things were going to have to be darn near perfect for us not to take a hit," said USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd, who inherited a team with the fifth-lowest APR in the nation when he was hired in January 2005. "We just had too far to climb and grow."
The USC football team achieved an APR of 948 and three Trojans teams -- women's cross-country, women's golf and women's soccer -- ranked in the top 10% of all scores in their sports. The UCLA men's basketball team achieved a 968 and the Bruins football team a 941.
