Just how bad were things in the IU basketball program last spring? The extent of the damage done by Kelvin Sampson (and some of the players) to Indiana's reputation may not have been quantifiable--until now. The number that illustrates it all: 2.13.
According to Doug Wilson at The Hoosier Scoop, this was the basketball squad's team GPA last semester.
The basketball team has historically had the lowest GPA of all the athletics teams at IU. A
report released to The Hoosier Scoop by the university shows that the basketball team has an overall "career" GPA of 2.47.
What makes matters worse, however, is the sudden drop in the team's GPA fro the fall to spring semester. In the fall, it seemed as though Sampson was helping to turn the basketball program around. With tough academic expectations from the coaching staff, the players produced a 2.89 team GPA for the fall semester, one of the best team averages of Sampson's career, and a mark that ranked the basketball team ahead of IU's football, wrestling, swimming, and baseball teams.
The sudden drop should certainly raise some eyebrows. Former IU guard Armon Bassett told Wilson that the drop was a result of Sampson's resignation.
"Everybody talks about our grades going down, and they did," Bassett told Wilson. "We didn’t go to class for two weeks when everything was going on, when we didn’t know what would happen to our coach. Every day we heard a new story, there were reporters waiting everywhere we went. It was a crazy time for us. We lost focus. And when that happens, you fall behind quickly. But our first semester showed what we can really do."
Personally, I'm not sure that I buy that as an excuse. It would be one thing to be distracted and have you grades suffer that way, but skipping class all together? I don't think that's acceptable. Plus, according to other sources, the problem wasn't just falling behind during those weeks.
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