NCAA Honors Three KU teams for APR success

April 23, 2009

LAWRENCE, Kan. – The University of Kansas men’s basketball, men’s cross country and women’s cross country teams were among those recognized Wednesday by the NCAA for being among NCAA Division I teams that earned multi-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores in the top 10 percent of all squads in their respective sports. All three teams had perfect multi-year scores of 1,000.

The APR provides a real-time look at a team’s academic success each semester by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete. The APR includes both retention at an institution and academic eligibility in its calculation and seeks to provide a clear picture of the academic culture in each sport.

The NCAA honored 767 Division I teams — 319 men’s and 448 women’s — about 11.8 percent of all 6,484 Division I teams. Last year, a total of 712 teams were recognized. The number of teams in some sports may exceed 10 percent, depending on how many teams achieved perfect 1,000 APR scores. In some sports, teams had to maintain a perfect score over the four-year period to be recognized.

The most recent APR scores are multi-year rates based on the scores from the 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years. High-performing teams receiving awards posted APR scores ranging from 976 to a perfect 1,000 over the data collection period.