INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana will give up two basketball scholarships for the upcoming season in anticipation of penalties related to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, assistant athletic director Frank Cuervo confirmed Wednesday.
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The APR is a percentage score over a rolling four-year period that measures retention and eligibility of players. Teams can lose scholarships if their score is subpar and they have a player who left school early and would not have been academically eligible had he remained.
University officials don't comment on players' academic standing due to privacy laws, but coach Tom Crean has said he "inherited a tremendous amount of dysfunction."
Cuervo said that the move is partially related to the number of players who have left since the end of the 2007-08 season. Eric Gordon went to the NBA. Brandon McGee, DeAndre Thomas, Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis were dismissed from the team, and Eli Holman and Jordan Crawford left the program.
But Cuervo said it wasn't that simple.
"It's not necessarily about one issue," said Cuervo. "It's obviously related to the APR score. In terms of reasons, it's not necessarily due to just players leaving.
Indiana already has given up one scholarship for 2008-09 due to the phone-call scandal under former coach Kelvin Sampson. Indiana still is awaiting the NCAA's decision on the allegations against Sampson.
"We will take contemporaneous penalties pro-actively this year for upcoming '07-08 numbers, and we don't anticipate further penalties going forward," school spokesman J.D. Campbell said.
Campbell said Crean's previous academic record at Marquette, including the fact that all 26 seniors who exhausted their eligibility graduated, made Indiana confident.
Crean has eight scholarship players available for the upcoming season. He also has a transfer who has to sit out a year and will be eligible in 2009-10. That counts as nine scholarships for 2008-09 and leaves the Hoosiers with one available.
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