The Rockets' men's basketball program under Head Coach Stan Joplin is tied for the third-best APR in the country.

May 3, 2007

TOLEDO, OH - The University of Toledo men's basketball program ranks at the top of the Mid-American Conference for a second straight year in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Academic Performance Rating (APR) release this week. Toledo's 994 rating is tied for third place among all NCAA Division I men's basketball programs and trails only Columbia and Davidson.

"The recognition of our academic performance is very important for us, and I want to thank my coaching staff and our academic services department for their commitment to our student-athletes," UT Head Coach Stan Joplin said. "We place a lot of importance on everyone in our program earning their degrees. Our success in the classroom comes from a lot of hard work by the student-athletes as well as the support they receive from everybody that is involved with our program."

The Rockets will have four student-athletes participating in graduation ceremonies on Sunday with Keonta Howell, Justin Ingram, Rashay Russell and Jerrah Young each receiving their degrees. Young still has one year of athletic eligibility remaining and will begin graduate school in the fall.

"It's going to be a special day for our players and their families on Sunday," Joplin said. "When we recruit student-athletes to come to Toledo, our primary goal is for them to graduate because having a college degree is something that will benefit them for the rest of their lives."

The NCAA's APR data was taken from the 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years and was released this week and included each institution's overall APR as well as a figure for each NCAA championship sport the school sponsors.

In the 2005-06 season, the men's basketball program was one of five UT athletic teams to earn a perfect `1,000' APR. The others were men's golf, women's golf, women's soccer and women's volleyball.

The APR is calculated by allocating points for eligibility and retention -- the two factors that research identifies as the best indicators of graduation. Each player on a given roster earns a maximum of two points per term, one for being academically eligible and one for staying with the institution. A team's APR is the total points of a team's roster at a given time divided by the total points possible. Since this results in a decimal number, the NCAA Committee on Academic Performance decided to multiply it by 1,000 for ease of reference. Thus, a raw APR score of .925 translates into the 925 that will become the standard terminology.

2005-06 Men's Basketball APR
Top Division I Schools - Data from academic years 2003-04 through 2005-06
1. Columbia 1000
Davidson 1000
3. Toledo 994
Belmont 994
Brigham Young 994
Brown 994
Princeton 994
Detroit 994
Yale 994
10. North Carolina 993
UNC Wilmington 993
Villanova 993
13. Harvard 988
14. Holy Cross 987
Dartmouth 987
Rider 987
17. Saint Louis 986
Illinois 986
Wake Forest 986
20. Bucknell 983

Mid-American Conference Men's Basketball APR Rankings

1. Toledo 994
2. Western Michigan 976
3. Miami 968
4. Ohio 965
5. Ball State 949
6. Northern Illinois 944
7. Buffalo 941
8. Bowling Green 939
9. Central Michigan 934
10. Akron 927
11. Kent State 890
12. Eastern Michigan 875