Racer women deliver perfect APR score
WBB: The NCAA released the Academic Progress Rate data for 2022-23 Tuesday
The Missouri Valley Conference announced Tuesday that Murray State’s women’s basketball team was one of 42 teams in the conference to receive perfect Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores of 1000 for the 2022-23 academic year.
According to the Missouri Valley, “Each academic year, every Division I sports team’s APR is calculated using a simple and consistent formula. Scholarship student-athletes can earn 1 point for staying on course for a degree in their chosen major and 1 point for being retained (or graduating) at the end of each academic term. For schools that do not offer athletics scholarships, recruited student-athletes are tracked. The Academic Performance Program has established an essential framework for academic excellence. The program provides measurable goals to ensure schools are fulfilling their commitment of equipping student-athletes with the tools and resources necessary to achieve academic success.”
In simpler terms, a school is rewarded with APR points by keeping players in the program and having them maintain their academic eligibility.
A team’s APR score for any given year is actually a rolling four-year average, which means the Racer women have had a perfect score of 1000 for each of the last four years. Since the APR was created during the 2004-05 school year, this is the first time Murray State’s women have achieved a rolling four-year score of 1000.
When a team’s APR drops below 930, they are subject to penalties which could include postseason bans. This is the first time since before COVID that the NCAA publicly released APR numbers and reinstated those penalties.
Murray State’s men received an APR score of 973 for the 2022-23 academic year. It was the second-highest score for the Racer men since the invention of the APR. The 2020-21 team earned a score of 975.