Every year just before tournament time you hear about the players who get ruled ineligible for academic or other reasons. Case in point in the SEC yesterday. Higgins from Tenn ruled academically ineligible for the tournament. Academically ineligible pretty much means you don't meet the grades to play mandated either by the school or NCAA. Now help me understand this. Tenn is in the middle of a semester (they are not on qtr's). How could this revelation come up in the middle of a semester? If you don't have grades now then how did you have them when the semester started? mid-term grades don't mean anything........and it's not mid-term. So if you are ineligible now then should't you have never played and your team should forfeit when you did play? Only reasonable explanations i can think of is that Higgins has dropped his course load below some level that he must maintain to be eligible. If that's the case then why the hell did he do it now? "All I want is to play in the regular season, I don't care about the SEC tourney or 'Big Dance'"
Well it could have been his grades from the Fall semester. Maybe the NCAA just now finally got around to checking the grades..who knows. I would think it would be he dropping to under full time or something like that.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/883444.asp?pne=11947&0ct=-300 Looks like it was for not passing enough classes in the fall. It sure did take awhile for them to find out. Should they have forfeited some games? The article also has some comments from Cliff Ellis and John Brady. Looking at AU's schedule this year and the recent blowout losses, I think they definitely have to win a game in the SEC tourney to get in. Loser of that AU/Tenn game should go to the NIT, IMO.
A clarification... According to what I've heard up here in Knoxville, he didn't fulfill the "Six-Hour" rule...it's like in football. He's eligible to play regular-season games, but not post-season. Remember, LSU had that problem with a player in the Sugarbowl? It's not that the player is flunking out...they just didn't take and pass enough hours. I guess he dropped some classes and was below the minimum hours or something. They don't have to forfeit any regular-season games, though. But he's a senior, so it hurts going into the tourney(s).
He didn't pass the 6 hour rule but his case was under 'appeal' to the NCAA bc he was taking 4 upper level math courses. It is the same reason why Tony Gipson got ruled ineligible. I guess we weren't smart enough to 'appeal'. The reason why some football players miss bowl games is not because they are only ineligible for the postseason but because that is usually the 1st game after the fall semester grades come out. Atleast I think that's why. And I think it could really hurt Tennessee if they lose in their first round game. Traditionally, the committee takes into account things like injuries and ineligible players when seeding teams. A couple of years ago Cincinatti was bumped from a #1 seed when Kenyon Martin broke his leg.
Re: A clarification... I think that was Blain Bech that was inelidgable last year for the Sugar Bowl in case anyone was curious about that.
