The University of Louisville men’s basketball team has posted its best combined grade point average of all time.
All but one player earned above a 3.0, making the combined team fall GPA a 3.47.That’s the highest yet, officials say.Associate athletic director Marvin Mitchell attributes success in part to athletic director Tom Jurich. Mitchell says in the late 1990s the pair changed how student athletes studied and received academic assistance while at the same time practicing their sports.“We’re going to teach you as a student athlete, yes, you’re going to practice three or four hours a day, you’re going to have rehab, you’re going to have to travel for games. But you’re also going to have to carve out time for studying and that is going to be mandatory as well.”Mitchell says the shakeup caused some of their counselors to leave.
“That in turn allowed us to go and get people who understood the philosophy that we were going to take coming into the University of Louisville with this administration,” says Mitchell.
For the past several years the men’s basketball team has posted at least a combined 3.0 or better, officials say.Mitchell attributes that to adding more counselors the past several years.Louisville received public recognition from the NCAA last year for being in the top 10 percent in men’s college basketball for academic eligibility, retention and graduation rates.
