Men's Basketball News

No more men’s hoops for CSM

Team’s season canceled: High rate of academic ineligibility causes decision

By Dallas Cogle
Maryland Independent Staff Writer
(article courtesy of Maryland Independent)
 

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007 - Tonight was supposed to feature a 7 p.m. tip-off at Rockville. An 8 p.m. tilt was on tap for Friday at Catonsville. And last week should have yielded outcomes vs. Cecil and Essex.

But these Maryland Junior College Conference games along with the rest of the season have all been canceled for the College of Southern Maryland men’s basketball program.
An offseason that was supposed to start no earlier than late February is already in full swing two months premature.
CSM pulled the plug on the season at the end of the fall semester Dec. 22 when the college ‘‘determined that a number of players on the men’s basketball team would become academically ineligible for the spring semester,” according to an official statement on the college’s Web site Friday.

The statement also mentioned that the college will ‘‘focus efforts on the team’s academic success,” and ‘‘will be addressing why this situation occurred and what can be done to ensure that it does not recur in our athletics program.”

CSM athletes are currently required to meet National Junior College Athletic Association academic standards of maintaining at least a 2.0 grade point average to be eligible for an upcoming semester of competition.

CSM, under third-year head coach Brandon Martin, finished its short season with a 4-9 overall tab, 1-3 in conference action.

‘‘It was a surprise; you never expect to have to end the season like this,” said Martin, who had never experienced anything of this nature before as a player or assistant coach before his CSM tenure. ‘‘At the same time, the guys need to understand why they are at school. It’s definitely not a good thing by any means to have to end it like that, but in the long run it’s going to make more sense the way it played out. This is in the best interest of everybody for the guys to realize why they are here.”

Martin and CSM Athletic Director Michelle Ruble said they were not permitted to disclose how many players on the team would have been academically ineligible for the spring semester.

‘‘Academics have to be first. It’s evident with this team that they were not,” said Ruble, who had never before been involved with cutting a season short of one of the college’s sports teams since becoming the athletic director in 2001. ‘‘At the college, we want to make the statement that academics have to be first. I think we accomplished that. Hopefully, there will be no repeating of this in the future.”
Ruble added that the program’s coaching staff has been suspended from basketball operations pending an investigation by the college to discover the root of the problem and how to sure it up. She said Martin, a part-time faculty member at the college, is allowed to interact with his players off the court, particularly aiding any that are looking to move on to four-year schools.

‘‘I think Coach Martin and his staff did what any other coaches would do — he used progress reports like we asked them to,” Ruble said about the usual process of CSM to ensure its athletes are making the grade. ‘‘Towards the end of the [fall] semester, four or five [of the basketball players] made attempts to add classes to try to enhance their semester.”

‘‘We were dealing with this and talking about it at the end of last semester,” Martin said about the academic state of his players. ‘‘We could’ve continued to play till the end of this month [before the start of the spring semester] and then tried to fill the roster by adding players [from those that red-shirted or from a tryout], but [canceling the season] was more for the players. It’ll be more positive for everyone to help the guys understand that we are here for education, not just basketball.”

Martin and Ruble acknowledged that the administration — specifically CSM president Bradley M. Gottfried — was ‘‘very involved” with the decision to disband this season.
‘‘Even though I do think it’s embarrassing, more than that, it shows a lot of courage and academic responsibility on the part of Coach Martin, the administration and the college itself to make this step,” Ruble said. ‘‘Academics need to be before athletics. We want to stop everything and get them back in class now that basketball is gone.”

As for how the canceled season and the reasoning behind it could affect the job security of Martin, that remains to be seen.

The confident-minded Martin has faced his share of adversity since taking over a down-and-out CSM program. But most of the adversity was on the court before this latest development.

Martin’s team struggled through a 4-24 season his first year in 2004-05 and, despite improvement still finished way below .500 last year with a 9-18 mark.

Wins were hard to come by this season as well, though Martin & Co. were victorious in what turned out to be their final game on Dec. 16 — an 86-79 victory over visiting Berean Institute.

‘‘At the moment, I’m on as the head coach for next year,” Martin said. ‘‘I don’t imagine it would change.”

‘‘We haven’t talked about his contract,” Ruble said about the issue.

‘‘We definitely feel that good things are still coming,” Martin added. ‘‘This is really not a step backward. We still feel we’re moving forward with the stuff we’re doing. With stopping the season, I feel this is a step forward in order for this type of thing not to happen in the future. We’re going to find guys who will be good student-athletes.”

Might the recruiting of more academically conscious athletes have allowed CSM to avoid this predicament?

‘‘That’s a great question ... [Martin] is basically recruiting Southern Maryland kids that were getting it done at the high school level,” said Ruble, who also holds the job title at CSM as Assistant Director of Student Life. ‘‘We’re doing research and trying to see any glaring reasons for why it happened. I know students in general are having a problem across the board, not just athletes. I don’t know if time management is an issue with kids coming out of high school. We’ve had many athletes from different sports comment on what they could do and how to get their grades up.”

Ruble added, ‘‘This is by far the most severe I’ve seen it [with athletes struggling with being academically eligible]. It hit the men’s team pretty hard. Basketball athletes are in the forefront, because they are two-semester athletes. They have to meet academic requirements each semester.”

One of the ways CSM is looking to avoid a repeat of an academically induced canceled athletic season in the future is by forming a program called Student-Athlete Academic Success, according to Ruble.

‘‘We will have an early warning system where student-athletes can get help with mandatory progress reports, study halls and tutoring,” she said. ‘‘We wouldn’t need to have additional staff [with this program] so it could run immediately. It would involve many departments at the college and there would be follow-ups.”

Ruble said the program could be implemented by the fall semester of this year and that CSM is contemplating raising its academic standards — above the national level — for its athletes to be academically eligible.

‘‘We’re going to look at [our athletes’ academics] from the inside out,” Ruble added.

There were members of the men’s basketball team not struggling with their academics.

CSM sophomore guard Keith Wagner is close to accepting a scholarship to continue his play at a four-year school.

‘‘We did have guys that were handling their business in the classroom,” Martin said.

CSM men’s team included six Southern Maryland Athletic Conference products representing La Plata, McDonough, Lackey, Leonardtown and Patuxent.