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Quote:Bearcats#1 Posted on Jul 28 2005, 09:49 AM
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I agree.....UC Football looks as promising as it ever has with a GREAT coach who is getting local talent......and they should not have to suffer because of the Huggins situation.
However....If Zimpher gets her way, UC Alums can give all they want, a min. ACT score for athletes of 25....which is her goal in three years is going to KILL the budding program anyway.
BIG EAST MOVE PULLS UC'S STANDARDS UP.(Sports)
This is the public record that I could find regarding Zimpher's stance. Are you sure what you are portraying as her 'stance' in reality isn't a complete and utter exaggeration propogated by those loyal to Huggins trying to discredit her in any shape or manner? Personally, I think she's doing a good enough job of discrediting herself on her own, and doesn't need the Bearcats' fan base adding to it with hysterical, unproven charges and apocalyptic prophecies of UC post-Huggins.
The Cincinnati Post (Cincinnati, OH); 6/4/2005
Byline: Lonnie Wheeler
It was two weeks ago that the University of Cincinnati officially raised its standards. It did so by tightening the admissions requirements for baccalaureate programs.
It was a year and a half ago that the university unofficially raised its standards. It did so by signing up with the Big East.
The moves are inevitably related. The Big East will make life a little tougher for the Bearcats football and basketball teams, among others; and the beleaguered UC president, Nancy Zimpher, has taken up that challenge for the entire campus.
Theoretically -- and isn't that the world in which higher education resides? -- it all makes perfect sense. It could even work for Bob Huggins, the mistreated symbol of Zimpher's single-mindedness.
"I think the Big East gives us a bigger pool to be a little more selective," said athletic director Bob Goin, suggesting, indirectly, that Huggins may no longer be pressed into recruiting the riskiest of student-athletes. "A new day has dawned.
"If the standards rise for the general university, we're in the same boat. When the water goes up, we're going up with it. I don't feel threatened that our coaches and athletes won't rise to the level where we're bringing in kids who are academically prepared. I haven't had one of them walk in here yet and indicate any major concerns about it. That's the level of the Big East."
Germane to the general discussion -- and overlooked in the furious polarizing into camps, Huggins or Zimpher -- is what that level actually is. We know that, football-speaking, it's marginally higher than what UC is accustomed to, and that, relative to basketball, it's almost ridiculously rarefied -- perhaps outreaching any conference that has preceded it.
But what of the scholarly side? What, exactly, is the paradigm of the academic community into which UC is officially moving on July 1?
There are, of course, too many ways to stab at that, most of them imprecise. Thankfully, we have the annual U.S. News and World Report report on which to lean. It tells us, perhaps, why Zimpher has lately proceeded with such urgency.
The fact is that the Big East is a more demanding league of universities than Conference USA. Notre Dame is ranked 18th in the nation, Georgetown 25th. Among public Big East institutions, Syracuse leads at No. 52, followed by Rutgers at 58, Connecticut at 66 and Pittsburgh at 69. Villanova and Providence are rated 1-2 in master's programs among Northern universities.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, trails along as one of six Big East schools rated in the magazine's unnumbered "3rd tier" category, the others being Louisville, South Florida, St. John's, DePaul and West Virginia. Additionally:
* Of the 16 Big East institutions (as of July 1, that is), UC posts the lowest average SAT score (920) among middle-percentile freshmen. Its ACT numbers, however, are higher than West Virginia's.
* Cincinnati's 49 percent graduation rate, equal to South Florida's, exceeds only West Virginia's and Louisville's.
* Next to West Virginia, which accepts everybody, UC is the least selective Big East member, admitting 88 percent of its applicants.
* UC and Louisville show a 74 percent freshman retention rate, ahead of only West Virginia and slightly in arrears of Seton Hall and South Florida.
The latter category, inseparable from the graduation rate, is one over which the UC hierarchy is profoundly concerned. Hence the crackdown on admissions.
"We have a graduation rate that we generally believe needs to be improved," said university spokesman Greg Hand. "That graduation rate is partially the effect of the preparedness of the students who apply.
"It's not the goal (of the new standards) to turn people away."
They may, however, turn people away from baccalaureate programs -- at least temporarily. Incoming freshmen who don't meet the new requirements may be rerouted to the Clermont or Raymond Walters campuses -- not an option for Bearcat athletes -- or the Center for Access and Transition, which was opened in the fall of 2004. By December, according to Hand, a third of the CATS enrollees had transferred to four-year programs.
In athletics parlance, such students would be the equivalent, roughly, of non- or partial qualifiers, whose status the Big East is reviewing. Freshman basketball player Vincent Banks, who recently left UC, was deemed a partial qualifier last season.
"I look at this as a recruiting plus," Goin said. "I don't think anybody will be denied access. They may take a side street to get onto the main street, but that's not fearful to me.
"This year, we did like a mock election. We looked at, if we had these kids under the new standards (effective in the fall of 2006), what would that mean? Who couldn't we take? We found we would have a minimal fallout that would force them into the CATS program."
But what of the recruiting fallout, particularly in men's basketball? In bold, controversial and ungracefully executed strokes, Zimpher and the UC trustees are asking that Huggins bring in players with more certain academic -- and presumably social -- projections. Meanwhile, traditional thinking has been that the coach is cornered by his urban, commuter campus, and seizes upon rough-edged athletes as the only way out.
In the Big East, however, Cincinnati is partnering with a larger urban community. It is trafficking in faster company, both athletic and academic. It is inheriting a significant amount of cachet.
And there's this hopeful prospect: If Huggins is steered away from the unpolished athlete, might it lead him to some purer shooters -- the kind that took West Virginia deep into the NCAA tournament?
Might it just all work out?
Might it work out so well, in fact, that the coach's contract is ultimately renewed after all?
Contact Lonnie Wheeler at lwheeler@cincypost.com.
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