Harvard men’s basketball continues to stumble.
Not in the realm of basketball, where the Crimson still stand as the prohibitive favorite in the Ivy League, but in the classroom.
Earlier this week, the NCAA released last year’s Academic Progress Rankings, used to assure that every collegiate squad maintains strong enough standards. If a score falls below a certain number, the school is penalized.
While Penn finished second in the Ivy with a score of 993 (the national average is 974), Harvard’s score of 956 is 25 points lower than Columbia, who came in with the second-lowest score in the Ivy.
The manner in which the NCAA calculates APR is that it takes the scores from the last four years and averages those numbers together.
Harvard’s scores have progressively gotten worse over the last four years.
After staying consistent with a 991 multi-year rate in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, the Crimson’s numbers started to slip the following year with a 974 before faltering even further with their 956.
Since the scores are taken from multiple years, those numbers mean that the Crimson’s academic performance has been even worse than their multi-year ranking indicates.
Unlike the Crimson, Penn stays near the top of the Ivy League. Over the last eight years, the Quakers have been extremely consistent academically, as their APR never dropped lower than 978 in the 2008-2009 campaign.
While the Crimson’s numbers are lower than they have been in the last eight years, they are still high enough to avoid any discipline from the NCAA.
Teams must fall beneath 925 to begin to lose scholarships and have NCAA intervention into the program, while those that slip past 900 are banned from postseason play.
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