UConn Basketball Ban: Postseason Punishments Are Pointless in One-and-Done Era

The University of Connecticut Huskies have been barred from postseason play in 2013, which means that the program cannot compete in the NCAA tournament and—subsequently—the Big East tourney.

According to ESPN, the three-time national champions are banned because of poor academic performance based on a scoring system known as the Annual Progress Rate.  The NCAA mandates that schools must keep their four-year scores above a 900 on the APR, so teams being punished in 2012 are feeling the impact from 2007-2011.

This whole system is just pointless now that a majority of recruits are attending college as  “one-and-done” mercenaries making a mandatory pit stop on their way to the NBA.

While UConn is better than some schools (we are looking at you Kentucky) at retaining players for more than one season (Andre Drummond is the first one-and-done in school history), they aren’t exactly known for putting academics ahead of basketball.

The Huskies are a perennial powerhouse contender that is used to making the NCAA tournament and won a national title in 2011, ironically enough a year that they are being punished for.

These sanctions aren’t going to make an impact on how recruits choose a school and if they decide to attend classes or not. Since UConn is banned for a year from important tourneys that will give these young prospects exposure, they’ll just jump ship to another promising school.

If said promising school gets infractions down the road from the actions of the one-and-done players in 2012, the next crop of talent will just take their talents to a different institution.

It’s a vicious cycle that does not impact the players whatsoever and they will always find a program willing to take the risk in exchange for the promise of a season of basketball glory.

The college-to-pro basketball system is broken and punishing a few random schools like UConn isn’t going to fix the academics or integrity that surround the problem.