John Calipari’s team performed well on the hardwood this season, but not so well off it.
The Kentucky basketball team posted a cumulative GPA of 2.025 in the fall, the lowest of any of the 20 athletic teams at the SEC school and the lowest for the men’s basketball team since the spring of 2002, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
That number was significantly lower than eventual NCAA champion Duke (3.01), Louisville (3.0) and Kansas (2.95).
“I was disappointed,” UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. said recently, according to the Herald-Leader.
“It’s not something we’re happy with, I’ll tell you that,” Sandy Bell, UK’s senior associate athletic director and the person in charge of student services, told the paper. “And we’ll be working on it to get it up. We certainly anticipate that going up in the spring” semester.”
That would be something, considering the team was busy playing an SEC schedule and reaching the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament in the spring.
Five Kentucky players, including four freshmen and likely No. 1 pick John Wall, declared for the June 24 NBA Draft.
Four players had a GPA of 2.0 or lower, but players needed to carry a 1.8 in the fall to play in the spring.
“It’s not the freshmen,” Bell told the paper. “It’s not the seniors. It’s not any one group. It’s kind of across the board and for a lot of different reasons.”