INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana -- Poor academic scores could create a very different kind of madness in March.
A record 10 men's basketball teams, including three-time national champion Connecticut, will be banned from next season's NCAA tournament because of sub-par work in the classroom. UConn becomes the first BCS school to face a postseason ban in either of the two most prominent college sports based solely on the annual Academic Progress Rate scores, which were released Wednesday by the NCAA.
Each of the schools fell below the mandated cutline of 900 on their four-year scores. The APR measures the classroom performance of every Division I team. This year's data calculates rates from 2007-08 through 2010-11.
Joining the Huskies on the sideline next March will be Arkansas-Pine Bluff, California-Riverside, Cal State Bakersfield, Jacksonville State, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina-Wilmington, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Toledo and Towson.
Cal State Bakersfield, which became a full-fledged Division I member in 2010-11 and does not yet have a conference affiliation in basketball, could still be removed from the banned list because some its data is still being evaluated.
"I think if a (BCS school) didn't make it, it would look really bad," Ohio University professor David Ridpath said last week. Ridpath is also past president of the NCAA watchdog The Drake Group.
All the banned teams, including Connecticut, face additional sanctions of losing a minimum of four hours of practice time per week, which must be replaced by academic activities. The penalties could create an unusual scenario for the seven affected conferences.
