Area and state colleges emerged mostly unscathed Tuesday when the NCAA released its latest Academic Progress Rate data, part of a reform movement that penalizes teams whose athletes consistently lag in the classroom.
Nationally, 150 college teams face scholarship losses next season and 26 others are in danger of being banned from the postseason as a result of the most recent APR scores.
One of those teams is the Hampton men's basketball squad, which scored under 900 on the APR for the second straight year and was penalized one scholarship. A third consecutive score under 900 next year would ban the Pirates from postseason competition.
East Carolina's men's basketball team faces the same sanctions.
Elsewhere, the toll was lighter. Old Dominion's wrestling team was docked four-tenths of a scholarship. The school had been allowed to divide 9.9 scholarships among team members. Now it will be limited to 9.48 scholarships.
ODU said the penalty is due to a wrestler transferring after the fall semester of his freshman year. Such "contemporaneous" penalties are applied when someone is academically ineligible when they leave. The penalty the NCAA issues in such cases is equal to the amount of scholarship aid the athlete was receiving.
ODU added that the wrestling team has improved its APR score each year since Steve Martin took over as coach in the 2004-05 academic year. Still, the wrestling team's score of 913 puts it in the bottom 10th percentile of 87 Division I wrestling squads.
At Norfolk State, the men's basketball team received a public notice for a four-year APR score that puts it in the 10th percentile of all teams within the sport. The men's basketball team scored 888. A score under 900 triggers sanctions.
The first-year sanction is a public warning, the one Norfolk State received. A second sub-900 triggers the loss of scholarships, recruiting and practice time; a third results in a ban from postseason competition and a fourth in a loss of Division I status.
Norfolk State director of athletics Marty Miller said the low score is a result of some players failing to graduate and others transferring from the program in the past three years.
"Coach (Anthony) Evans is working very hard to prevent this trend from happening in the future," Miller said. "Fortunately, some of these players have re-enrolled at NSU to complete their degree requirements."
Officials at Hampton did not return phone calls Tuesday.
East Carolina said its men's basketball team has made improvement, with its GPA jumping from 2.13 in the fall of 2004 to 2.78 in the fall of 2007. In addition, all players since 2005 have remained academically eligible and those who have transferred have been in good standing when they left.
"It is possible that no other NCAA institution has shown a comparable improvement in team GPA during this time period," athletic director Terry Holland said. "And I believe that the ECU men's basketball team's class attendance is among the nation's best as well."
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