APR

[Edward Sargent]

I haven't seen two things mentioned in all the APR stuff. First is that our problems with the APR seem to have coincided with Ted Taigen's retirement and second also with the summer that JC did little recruiting as he was undergoing treatment for cancer. I met Ted several years ago when he was the academic advisor to the mens and womens teams and he essentially knew where each and every bball player was and how many credits he or she needed to complete a degree, pushed hard for them (including guys like Ray Allen) to take courses worked to help them find jobs outside the NBA, created study halls while on the road, helped with homework (Ted is an evolutionary biologist) etc. I don't see that Ted's position was replaced. Does anyone know if it was and by whom? The second issue may have more to do with the recruiting violations as during that summer JC left a lot to the assistant coaches. Hard tto "maintain an atmosphere of compliance" from a hospital bed. Now of course if JC and the AD got along things might have been better - don't know. Just some thoughts to chew on.

 

[Tenspro2002]

It's true that serious failures on the recruiting front have contributed both to underperformance on the court and to the excess of transfers that have killed our APR and put our program in peril.

I'd be interested if that coincided with periods where JC handed off the reins to assistants who weren't doing a very good job.

 

[Dogbreath2U]

I haven't seen two things mentioned in all the APR stuff. First is that our problems with the APR seem to have coincided with Ted Taigen's retirement and second also with the summer that JC did little recruiting as he was undergoing treatment for cancer. I met Ted several years ago when he was the academic advisor to the mens and womens teams and he essentially knew where each and every bball player was and how many credits he or she needed to complete a degree, pushed hard for them (including guys like Ray Allen) to take courses worked to help them find jobs outside the NBA, created study halls while on the road, helped with homework (Ted is an evolutionary biologist) etc. I don't see that Ted's position was replaced. Does anyone know if it was and by whom? The second issue may have more to do with the recruiting violations as during that summer JC left a lot to the assistant coaches. Hard tto "maintain an atmosphere of compliance" from a hospital bed. Now of course if JC and the AD got along things might have been better - don't know. Just some thoughts to chew on.

I do believe that you are correct that that position was not refilled. This could very well have been a major reason that the monitoring slipped on the academic side. If this is true, then the failure to fill this position as well as the fundraiser position were major mistakes by Hathaway. No way of knowing how those responsibilities may have been reassigned, but potentially another breakdown there. The primary responsibility lies with the student, but it makes sense to me that players who have to spend that much time and energy working on basketball should have some significant help with monitoring how well they are keeping up as well as with help with subject matter.

 

[johnhuskies95]

Hathaway was an incompetent buffoon when it came to filling positions. He left numerous important positions vacant and had only 1 full time compliance officer. Most schools have at least 3 that are just dedicated to the football team.

 

[Palatine]

Hathaway was an incompetent buffoon when it came to filling positions. He left numerous important positions vacant and had only 1 full time compliance officer. Most schools have at least 3 that are just dedicated to the football team.

+1

 

[upstater]

Would keeping track of player grades help the APR in those years? Players leaving early for a pro contract was the likeliest cause, I thought.

 

[HuskyBandDad]

I am still not sure how this APR works but if a kid transfers his impact on the APR should follow him to his new school to some extent so other schools should take on some responsibility for taking a kid who is not serious in the classroom. Buyer beware.

 

[HooperScooper]

Felicia Crump replaced Ted Taigen as the academic counselor to the men's basketball team. She's still in that position but she's not as visible with the program as Taigen was. Taigen used to sit on the bench for games. I also remember Taigen saying he used to meet with the players over breakfast once a week to talk about where they stood in each class. I have no idea if Crump is any less involved than Taigen was.

 

[HarryAGampel]

Ted Taigen was the man! I had him as a professor with Curtis Kelly in the same class. When Curtis came late to exam one time, Prof. Taigen was livid and had a pretty heated conversation with him. Hopefully Felicia Crump is getting through to players like I know Prof. Taigen was.

 

[upstater]

But as I've said a million times already, grades may be totally irrelevant to the aPR score. You can get straight As, but if you leave for a pro contract without enough credits, you've dinged the score. I don't care if you're Ted Taigen or almighty god, you can do anything about that.

 

[SubbaBub]

Would keeping track of player grades help the APR in those years? Players leaving early for a pro contract was the likeliest cause, I thought.

It was players tanking their last semester working out for a pro contract and transfers not having their academic house in order when they left or were pushed out for whatever reason.

In BB, it only takes two or three guys in an academic year to get an APR of 829 which means, so long 2yr average. Lose one more guy the next year and so long 4yr average.




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[Edward Sargent]

Would keeping track of player grades help the APR in those years? Players leaving early for a pro contract was the likeliest cause, I thought.

Players leaving for a pro contract in good academic standing are not an APR problem otherwise KY would have gone down with us. We didn't have the necessary A B courses for athletes that other school had maybe. You know A if you write the paper B if you don't

 

[NEforceUConn]

I hear all this APR talk but I never have seen anyone post the 2, 3 or 4 players that hurt us. I'm sure someone knows, and hopefully isn't tired of repeating it.

Did Nate Miles, who was expelled in Oct 2008 hurt us by recording Fs for a semester, or a year? Seems silly that the school throws out a criminal (allegedly) and its APR suffers, if this is indeed the case. Now why the school would recruit a criminal is another matter, but should be separate from APR.

 

[DogMania]

I too wondered about the timeing of Taigen's retirement and the APR troubles. But as somoene pointed out the APR is not impacted by players leaving early for the NBA or another program. It's all about completing the a minimum amount of classes per year. If a player leaves early without completing their full course load, or even a returning player doesn't complete their course load by failing some classes, the program starts losing important points.

So maybe some combination of Taigen and the proper number of compliance officers could have helped prevent some of this mess. No matter how you slice it someone drpped the ball. If 95% of the programs out there were able to figure out how to stay ahead of the upcoming APR changes, why couldn't UConn.

I don't know if JH deserves all the blame for this. Somehow all the other sports programs at UConn didn't end up in the same poor shape as that of the men's program. Bottom line, someone messed up, but that doesn't mean I agree for one moment that the crime justifies the penalty they've received especially when not a single player on the team is responsible for the bad prior scores.

I long for the day when I no longer see the letters APR.

 

[Gurleyman]

Crump was the one who volunteered to Sports Illustrated "that was the first book Kemba ever read".

Perhaps she's good at her job (based on current APR scores), but they should never let her speak to the media ever again, for any reason.

 

[Gurleyman]

Players leaving for a pro contract in good academic standing are not an APR problem otherwise KY would have gone down with us. We didn't have the necessary A B courses for athletes that other school had maybe. You know A if you write the paper B if you don't

It's been documented that our "0-fers" on the APR score from our disastrous 2009-10 were Darius Smith (transferred out to a junior college while academically ineligible) and Jon Mandeldove, which are heavy points against you. Plus Gavin didn't finish his last 6-12 credits, Stanley Robinson had to be well behind due to missing a semester, Jamal Trice transferred out, and I'm guessing that Jamal Coombs-McDaniel's transfer docking us 22 points the following year meant that he was behind in his progress as a freshman. Donnell, Kemba and Dyson were obviously fine, and Chuck caught up somewhere in between being academically ineligible after his first semester in 2008-09 and graduating in 2011, so I imagine he was good by 2009-10, and we know Alex O was a good student.

Miles was an 0-fer in 2008-09, so he's not a factor in our two-year score, but he is in our four-year one, so without him we might indeed have been eligible.

 

[upstater]

Players leaving for a pro contract in good academic standing are not an APR problem otherwise KY would have gone down with us. We didn't have the necessary A B courses for athletes that other school had maybe. You know A if you write the paper B if you don't

That's

Players leaving for a pro contract in good academic standing are not an APR problem otherwise KY would have gone down with us. We didn't have the necessary A B courses for athletes that other school had maybe. You know A if you write the paper B if you don't

The question is, what is good academic standing? It's not about grades. It's about being eligible (i.e. number of credits). so this idea that Taigen could have helped is suspect. Unless Taigen excelled at setting up bogus courses for players, he couldn't have helped.

 

[upstater]

I too wondered about the timeing of Taigen's retirement and the APR troubles. But as somoene pointed out the APR is not impacted by players leaving early for the NBA or another program. It's all about completing the a minimum amount of classes per year. If a player leaves early without completing their full course load, or even a returning player doesn't complete their course load by failing some classes, the program starts losing important points.

So maybe some combination of Taigen and the proper number of compliance officers could have helped prevent some of this mess. No matter how you slice it someone drpped the ball. If 95% of the programs out there were able to figure out how to stay ahead of the upcoming APR changes, why couldn't UConn.

How would Taigen have prevented this? The players up and left the program in mid-semester. He couldn't prevent that. Do you think Kentucky players are sticking around campus right now? No. They have eligibility taken care of with bogus intersession courses from earlier on.

 

[RS9999X]

Taigen?

Here's UConn's APR history. Note Taigen's first rolling 4-year score

2004 - 2005 889
2005 - 2006 934
2006 - 2007 946
2007 - 2008 939
2008 - 2009 930
2009 - 2010 893

 

[wpq4elamin]

Ted Taigen was the man! I had him as a professor with Curtis Kelly in the same class. When Curtis came late to exam one time, Prof. Taigen was livid and had a pretty heated conversation with him. Hopefully Felicia Crump is getting through to players like I know Prof. Taigen was.

No wonder he left!!!! How could you yell at a basketball player for something soooo minor as being late to an exam?

 

[wpq4elamin]

I too wondered about the timeing of Taigen's retirement and the APR troubles. But as somoene pointed out the APR is not impacted by players leaving early for the NBA or another program. It's all about completing the a minimum amount of classes per year. If a player leaves early without completing their full course load, or even a returning player doesn't complete their course load by failing some classes, the program starts losing important points.

So maybe some combination of Taigen and the proper number of compliance officers could have helped prevent some of this mess. No matter how you slice it someone drpped the ball. If 95% of the programs out there were able to figure out how to stay ahead of the upcoming APR changes, why couldn't UConn.

I don't know if JH deserves all the blame for this. Somehow all the other sports programs at UConn didn't end up in the same poor shape as that of the men's program. Bottom line, someone messed up, but that doesn't mean I agree for one moment that the crime justifies the penalty they've received especially when not a single player on the team is responsible for the bad prior scores.

I long for the day when I no longer see the letters APR.

As someone else pointed out, however, basketball is probably the easiest to screw up if you have a couple bad eggs or a couple bad years.... there are so few players, that it kills your score if 2 guys end up tanking....