In another attempt to be proactive in its dealings with the NCAA, IU will give up two scholarships for the upcoming season due to less than satisfactory APR scores. The Associated Press has the details:

Assistant Athletic Director Frank Cuervo said that the move is partially related to the number of players who have left since the end of the 2007-08 season. Eric Gordon went to the NBA. Brandon McGee, DeAndre Thomas, Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis were dismissed from the team, and Eli Holman and Jordan Crawford left the program.

But Cuervo said it wasn’t that simple.

“It’s not necessarily about one issue,” Cuervo said. “It’s obviously related to the APR score. In terms of reasons, it’s not necessarily due to just players leaving.”

Frank is actually right. It’s not just about players leaving; it’s about several players leaving in a less than favorable academic standing. Tom Crean described the situation as a “tremendous amount of dysfunction” upon his arrival in Bloomington and that seems to jibe with how things were run during the Kelvin Sampson era. This isn’t a huge deal for the upcoming season as Crean and staff have just eight scholarship players on the roster. If this continues beyond this season, well, that’s a different story.

The NCAA released academic progress rate (APR) for all of its Division I schools today and IU ranked No. 268 out of 337 in men’s basketball. The report scores each institution through the 2006-2007 school year. The minimum score a school can achieve without losing scholarships in a particular sport is 925. IU’s score was 899. Since this only covers data through 2006-2007, IU could see a significant drop in next year’s score based on the rumored academic troubles in the program as well as the mass defections in recent weeks.

Update: After a further examination of this report (and a Hat Tip is due to Chris Korman for this revelation of footnote 3 on Pg. 1), IU has avoided losing another scholarship because “the team demonstrated academic improvement and had a favorable comparison based on other academic or institutional factors.”

Here’s a link to the complete report:

• Indiana University NCAA academic progress rate