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The Daily Wildcat

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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat

 

    “Basketball, football rank last in Pac-10 graduation rate”

    The NCAA released its yearly athletics Graduation Success Rate report, and both the Arizona basketball and football teams finished dead last in the Pacific 10 Conference.

    It is the third year in a row the football team ranked last, but now the men’s basketball team joins the football team at the bottom.

    The report is based on scholarship players that were enrolled between 1997 and 2000 and graduated within six years of enrollment.

    Only 41 percent of the football players enrolled at that time graduated and 25 percent of men’s basketball players graduated. The NCAA average for both sports is 67 and 61 percent, respectively.

    However, a big reason for the low basketball total is that many of Lute Olson’s players choose to go professional before they graduate.

    The closest graduation rate to men’s basketball was USC’s program, which graduated 29 percent. The highest total was Washington, at 70 percent.

    In football, California’s program was the closest to Arizona’s at 52 percent. The highest rate in football was Stanford, at 93 percent.

    Arizona Athletics as a whole is still above what NCAA President Myles Brand called the benchmark, 60 percent.

    It finished at 63 percent, two points below last year’s total.

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