KU Men's Hoops, Women's Cross Country Honored by NCAA
June 5, 2013
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Mention ‘the streak’ and Kansas basketball’s nine-straight regular season Big 12 titles come to mind. The Jayhawks’ other streak, however, continued Wednesday, as the NCAA recognized the Kansas men’s basketball and women’s cross country teams for achieving four-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores that are among the nation’s top-10 percent in their respective sports.
Both sports have achieved a four-year APR score of 1,000, the highest score attainable. That makes seven-consecutive years that the men’s basketball program has achieved a perfect APR in a single season and six-consecutive years honored with a Public Recognition Award for its success over multiple seasons. Hold the applause, however, as the women’s cross country team has had a perfect score in each of the nine years the NCAA has published this data.
“We certainly have a couple positive streaks going for us right now and I’m definitely proud of the guys for the work they put in outside of basketball,” Kansas head basketball coach Bill Self said. “We’ve been fortunate to have guys who buy in to what it means to be a Jayhawk in basketball and in life, and we’re blessed to have a tremendous academic support staff and resources our guys can take advantage of.”
APRs for all teams, including access to postseason play and penalties for low-performing teams, will be released June 11. This year’s honorees included 976 NCAA Division I sports teams. Kansas is one of 61 schools to receive an NCAA Public Recognition Award in each of the eight years of the program – the only school in the Big 12 Conference to accomplish this feat. The Jayhawks have had a total of 22 teams honored with Public Recognition Awards (for multi-year academic success) and have had 39 teams achieve perfect single-season APRs in the last nine years.
The men’s basketball team’s six Public Recognition Awards rank among the top-10 in the country, putting the players that have consistently won championships, including an NCAA title and nine-straight Big 12 regular season titles, in the same academic regard as schools like Belmont (8), Holy Cross (8), Davidson (8), BYU (7), Bucknell (7), Columbia (7), Princeton (7), Navy (7), Brown (6), Harvard (6), North Carolina (6) and Yale (6).
The four-year APR scores of all of KU’s 18 sports programs are expected to register well above the requisite measure of 925 established by the NCAA for good standing. The most recent multi-year APRs are based on scores from the 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11, 2011-12 academic years.
The APR provides a real-time look at a team’s academic success each semester by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete on scholarship. The APR accounts for eligibility, retention and graduation, providing a measure of each team’s academic performance.
KUAthletics.com: The official online source for Kansas Athletics, Williams Education Fund contributions, tickets, merchandise, multimedia, photos and much, much more.
