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When news broke yesterday that UB Wrestling had fallen below the APR line and received a postseason ban for the coming season, Tim sent an email around to the editors with the words "Big news. Big Bad News." And if you want to know the specifics of the news itself, head on over to Tim's piece on the sanctions.
In this post I'm looking to figure out just how bad this downtick is. Coach Stutzman has indicated on Twitter that the program will get better, and it sounds from the press release like none of this is a huge surprise to the Athletic Department. Stutzman is a Danny White hire and should have full support of the AD following a 2013-14 season that improved on the last and will now be buttressed by a top-20 recruiting class.
What we should be concerned about is our UB student-athletes getting the chance to shine at every opportunity. And to that end, I want to figure out just what this 925 number and the accompanying sanction means for UB Wrestling means going forward.
First, a quick refresher on APR:
The APR reflects a team keeping its scholarship athletes in school and keeping them eligible. We don't need to go into the mathematics of how we get to scores in the 900s, but know that a 1000 is perfect. A 925 reflects a 50% graduation rate. Across all sports, Division 1 averages a 973.
And on how APR affects eligibility:
Recent years have seen the NCAA establish stricter and steeper thresholds when it comes to the APR. The old 'default' line of 925 has been raised to 930, and the NCAA has made it easier to receive stronger sanctions if a team does drop below that line. Postseason bans can now occur at the 930 line instead of at 900.
The APR scores you see are in fact four-year rolling averages. That is to say, UB Wrestling's 925 isn't this past year's score, but this past year's score averaged in with the previous three years, as well. Teams can avoid sanctions for next year if their two-year average is above 940 (which would demonstrate clear improvement in the more recent seasons), but that bit is only true for the upcoming season to mitigate the effects of raising the threshold from 925 to 930.
With that in mind, whatever happened to drop Wrestling's 2012-2013 score so low is going to continue affecting the four-year rolling average - which must stay above 930 - for three more years to come. So just how deep of a hole is it?
APR scores are searchable by basically any variable you'd like at this site. All of the data I'm using comes from there.
First, let's just see the APR scores for Wrestling for each season:
Sport
School
State
Academic Year
Multi-Year Rate
Penalties
Postseason
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2004 - 2005
890
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2005 - 2006
886
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2006 - 2007
907
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2007 - 2008
923
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2008 - 2009
952
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2009 - 2010
970
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2010 - 2011
970
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2011 - 2012
961
Men's Wrestling
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
NY
2012 - 2013
925
Level One Penalty - Practice Reduction = Yes5
Postseason Ineligibility = Yes5
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