Men's basketball one of 10 Arizona sports with perfect APR scores in 2023-24

The Arizona men’s basketball program posted a perfect NCAA Academic Progress Rate for the third straight season in 2023-24, while nine other UA sports also hit the top score of 1,000.

The NCAA, which updated its annual metric for academic progress and retention Tuesday, also gave “Public Recognition Awards” to men’s basketball, women’s cross country and soccer for having a four-year APR average in the top 10% of their sports.

The NCAA bases awards and penalties on the multi-year APR score, and the UA men’s basketball team’s four-year rate of 994 tied for third among Big 12 schools. The Wildcats have been perfect under fourth-year coach Tommy Lloyd except in his first season of 2021-22, when the Wildcats posted a 979 score.

Only the notably stable men’s basketball programs at Houston (1,000) and Colorado (995) recorded higher multi-year APR scores than Arizona among Big 12 teams.

The Arizona women’s cross country program, meanwhile, was one of seven Big 12 programs in that sport to record a perfect 1,000 multi-year score. In soccer, UA, Texas Tech and Utah all had perfect multi-year scores among Big 12 schools.

Among multi-year rates in Big 12 programs, the UA football team ranked 12th with a 969, while women’s basketball ranked eighth at 989.

In 2023-24, other Arizona sports posting perfect 1,000 APR scores included men’s swimming and diving plus eight women’s sports: Cross country, golf, gymnastics, softball, soccer, beach volleyball, tennis and triathlon.

All UA sports recorded multi-year rates comfortably above 930, the minimum score needed to avoid penalties and to be eligible for postseason competition.

Arizona said five of its programs set or matched their program record for multi-year APR scores, including football, soccer, women’s track and field, women’s cross country and triathlon. Men’s basketball’s 994 score was its highest multi-year APR since 2015, while gymnastics (995), softball (996), men’s tennis (993) and women’s tennis (992) posted their second-best scores in program history.

Unlike graduation rates, the NCAA’s APR ratings are relatively real-time measurements of retention and academic eligibility within a program.

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Each player typically represents four opportunities per year, one in retention and one in eligibility for each semester, and the percentage of successes is multiplied by 1,000 to generate the score.

For example, basketball teams with 12 or 13 scholarship players would score about 980 with one “miss” of either academic ineligibility or retention during a two-semester academic year.

In 2021-22, when UA’s men’s basketball program had a 979 score, three players left early for the NBA while two transferred out, so one departing player likely had an academic demerit.

However, there are a number of ways points can be restored — and there is no penalty for players who leave early and sign pro contracts but do so while academically eligible.

Nor are there penalties for players who transfer but record a grade-point average of roughly 2.0 or better.

Transfers used to need a 2.6 GPA to avoid costing their former programs any APR points, but the NCAA moved to a less-firm requirement in 2021-22, allowing transfers to earn APR points for their former programs as long as they are “meeting Division I progress-toward-degree requirements when they change schools.”