In the clear: Cajuns’ APR scores hit the mark in 15 of 16 sports

Joshua Parrott • jparrott@theadvertiser.com • June 10, 2010

 

UL received plenty of good news Wednesday after the NCAA released the Academic Progress Rate scores for all of its member schools from the 2008-09 academic year.

Fifteen of the 16 Ragin’ Cajun athletic teams scored above the NCAA-mandated APR score of 925 last year, with only men’s cross country (921) falling below that benchmark.

Men’s golf, men’s tennis, women’s cross country and volleyball achieved perfect APR scores of 1,000 for ’08-09.

UL joined Denver, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Troy and Western Kentucky as the only Sun Belt Conference schools to avoid any scholarship and/or practice time penalties for their multi-year APR score.

At least one Cajun athletic team had been penalized in each of the previous four years.

Each NCAA Division I athletic team calculates its APR annually based on the eligibility and retention of scholarship student-athletes. Teams that score below 925 out of a possible 1,000 can face penalties such as scholarship losses and restrictions on practice and competition.

In addition to individual year APR scores, an average is based over a four-year period.

Multiple attempts by The Daily Advertiser to reach UL athletic director David Walker and UL senior associate athletic director Scott Farmer were unsuccessful on Wednesday.

UL’s other top APR scores for ’08-09 include women’s outdoor track (991), women’s soccer (988), men’s basketball (980), women’s indoor track (974), women’s tennis (963), baseball (962), football (955) and women’s basketball (958).

The UL softball team has the top multi-year APR score (977) in the conference. In baseball, the Cajuns have the second-best multi-year APR score (960) in the Sun Belt behind only Middle Tennessee (974).

UL has the fifth-best multi-year APR score in football (934) and women’s basketball (960).

For men’s basketball, the Cajuns (917) are seventh in the league, but that score will skyrocket once their 2005-06 score (680) drops off next year.

With the men’s basketball team’s ’08-09 APR score (980), the program moved one closer to exiting the NCAA’s historical-penalty phase.