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The following is an article written by Donna Ditota published on Syracuse.com on Feb. 11, 2010 that gives insight into the academic side of Syracuse basketball. For those here wondering how Fab's academic situation was allowed to happen, this article will answer some questions and raise others.
SU players followed a regimented academic program
By Donna Ditota/The Post-Standard
Ninety minutes after basketball practice ended in the Carrier Dome earlier this week, Brandon Triche met with his academic mentor.
He and Beck Abraham, a teacher in the Jamesville-DeWitt school district, huddled in a study room in the Manley Field House academic wing. They checked Syracuse University’s computer blackboard system, where professors post pertinent information about classes, and compared it to the Orange men’s upcoming schedule. An assignment in Triche’s Religion and Sports class loomed. Another instructor wanted specific information about the service aspect of a Triche project.
While Triche and Abraham methodically plotted class strategy, Mookie Jones and James Southerland met in another room with their mentor, SU graduate student Adrian Henry. Jones showed Henry a paper he finished earlier in the day while James researched his Writing 105 paper on the impact of social networking on adolescence. In another corner of that room, DaShonte Riley worked quietly on a critique of an article on tattoo subculture for Sociology 101.
These study periods, mandated by SU director of basketball operations Stan Kissel and by academic coordinator Stephanie Langstaff, happen day and night at Manley Field House.
“It keeps you focused,” Southerland said. “There’s nothing to be distracted by here because everybody’s working. I have a tutor if I need help on a certain topic. And I just find it a lot easier to relax and get stuff done. I feel like I’m in a better atmosphere here rather than at home with the TV, video games and whatnot.”
It’s not as if Southerland has a choice. Each SU basketball player follows a specific academic regimen imposed by Kissel and Langstaff. (Different sports at SU enforce different academic protocols for their athletes.) Basketball players are assigned tutors and some sign on with mentors. Team managers, all 21 of them, are assigned to check players’ classes for attendance. Skipping classes or tutor sessions can mean extra running or for repeat offenders, more dire consequences.
“I missed a couple. I’m not gonna lie. And they made me run,” Riley said. “And the punishment gets worse every time you miss. You try to stay on point. And it’s really not helpful to miss.”
Riley and his freshmen classmates had been scholastically dissected before they set foot on the SU campus. Kissel said he identifies the academic strengths and weaknesses of each SU recruit and attempts to match incoming players “with the resources they might need when they arrive here.”
Players take summer school classes before they officially touch a basketball at SU. Often, those summer classes will be especially demanding because they cannot be interrupted by, say, a road trip to West Virginia. Classes that require a significant amount of writing usually occur in the summer, when players have more time to ruminate and compose.
In Langstaff’s office, white binders with players’ names typed into the spine sit on a shelf. Those binders contain detailed information about every class, every assignment and can be accessed by players, their tutors and mentors.
“In men’s basketball, we really personalize everything,” Langstaff said. “We have their study hours very structured. It’s usually with somebody here – myself, a mentor or a tutor. And we will go very specifically through tasks and assignments and tracking to make sure they’re doing everything they need to do.”
Langstaff, who came to the SU athletic department from the College of Arts and Sciences where she was an academic adviser, said every college at SU provides tutors for its students. But athletes, unlike the general student population, must complete certain requirements – called Progress Toward Degree – to maintain eligibility in their sports.
A business management major, say, can take an art class at SU without repercussions. But an athlete needs to consider how that class shapes his NCAA obligations.
“It isn’t the typical student experience,” Langstaff said. “It’s a difficult adjustment, especially on this level.”
Basketball players, with their eight regular-season road trips this semester and the likelihood of lengthier departures in the post-season, present letters to each of their professors at the start of the semester detailing which class days they will miss.
Sometimes, professors allow them to take a test scheduled for a road game day before the player leaves for his basketball destination. Other times, Langstaff might travel with the team to administer the test when a professor declines to make exceptions.
Kissel conducts study tables on longer road trips. The goal of all this order is to ensure that players earnestly tackle their studies, Kissel said, that they leave SU with degrees. All this attention to academic detail also enhances a player’s chance to maintain his athletic eligibility.
“We like to think we make it difficult to not be eligible,” Langstaff said. “But it’s not impossible. Because ultimately the student is responsible for their own work and their class attendance.”
The freshmen like Triche and Southerland and Riley have more detailed, more structured study schedules than someone like Arinze Onuaku, a fifth-year senior with a 3.0 GPA. The Orange freshmen said navigating the class workload, combined with the demanding basketball schedule, was an arduous task that would overwhelm them without the aid of an ordered system.
“It’s definitely hard being a basketball player and a student,” Triche said. “Most of the time you’re spending on being a basketball player and on trying to get better. We’re not able to spend extra time with teachers that the other kids get the chance to do.”
“I’m gonna be honest – a lot of times I don’t want to come here after practice and after going to classes all through the day,” Jones said. “But it’s a relief once you get your work done and you can sit around and just relax and don’t have to at the last minute get this done and that done.”
Jones, a sophomore academically, said he tried and discarded five or six tutors since he arrived on the SU campus. Some explained things too quickly, he said, others took so long to clarify issues he “got nothing done.” But he and Southerland like Henry, a grad student in secondary special education with a concentration in social studies. Henry said each player improved his grades last semester.
Langstaff and Kissel appreciate those kind of success stories. Cooperation and effort, they say, form the cornerstones to the players’ academic success.
“The bottom line is you can’t do it unless they want to be involved. Or they are invested in it,” Kissel said. “The kids have a definite say in what they want to do, how they like their mentors, what classes they take and like. The most important thing is giving them a voice in the process. You can’t be successful unless they buy into it. And this group has bought into it.”
SU players followed a regimented academic program
By Donna Ditota/The Post-Standard
Ninety minutes after basketball practice ended in the Carrier Dome earlier this week, Brandon Triche met with his academic mentor.
He and Beck Abraham, a teacher in the Jamesville-DeWitt school district, huddled in a study room in the Manley Field House academic wing. They checked Syracuse University’s computer blackboard system, where professors post pertinent information about classes, and compared it to the Orange men’s upcoming schedule. An assignment in Triche’s Religion and Sports class loomed. Another instructor wanted specific information about the service aspect of a Triche project.
While Triche and Abraham methodically plotted class strategy, Mookie Jones and James Southerland met in another room with their mentor, SU graduate student Adrian Henry. Jones showed Henry a paper he finished earlier in the day while James researched his Writing 105 paper on the impact of social networking on adolescence. In another corner of that room, DaShonte Riley worked quietly on a critique of an article on tattoo subculture for Sociology 101.
These study periods, mandated by SU director of basketball operations Stan Kissel and by academic coordinator Stephanie Langstaff, happen day and night at Manley Field House.
“It keeps you focused,” Southerland said. “There’s nothing to be distracted by here because everybody’s working. I have a tutor if I need help on a certain topic. And I just find it a lot easier to relax and get stuff done. I feel like I’m in a better atmosphere here rather than at home with the TV, video games and whatnot.”
It’s not as if Southerland has a choice. Each SU basketball player follows a specific academic regimen imposed by Kissel and Langstaff. (Different sports at SU enforce different academic protocols for their athletes.) Basketball players are assigned tutors and some sign on with mentors. Team managers, all 21 of them, are assigned to check players’ classes for attendance. Skipping classes or tutor sessions can mean extra running or for repeat offenders, more dire consequences.
“I missed a couple. I’m not gonna lie. And they made me run,” Riley said. “And the punishment gets worse every time you miss. You try to stay on point. And it’s really not helpful to miss.”
Riley and his freshmen classmates had been scholastically dissected before they set foot on the SU campus. Kissel said he identifies the academic strengths and weaknesses of each SU recruit and attempts to match incoming players “with the resources they might need when they arrive here.”
Players take summer school classes before they officially touch a basketball at SU. Often, those summer classes will be especially demanding because they cannot be interrupted by, say, a road trip to West Virginia. Classes that require a significant amount of writing usually occur in the summer, when players have more time to ruminate and compose.
In Langstaff’s office, white binders with players’ names typed into the spine sit on a shelf. Those binders contain detailed information about every class, every assignment and can be accessed by players, their tutors and mentors.
“In men’s basketball, we really personalize everything,” Langstaff said. “We have their study hours very structured. It’s usually with somebody here – myself, a mentor or a tutor. And we will go very specifically through tasks and assignments and tracking to make sure they’re doing everything they need to do.”
Langstaff, who came to the SU athletic department from the College of Arts and Sciences where she was an academic adviser, said every college at SU provides tutors for its students. But athletes, unlike the general student population, must complete certain requirements – called Progress Toward Degree – to maintain eligibility in their sports.
A business management major, say, can take an art class at SU without repercussions. But an athlete needs to consider how that class shapes his NCAA obligations.
“It isn’t the typical student experience,” Langstaff said. “It’s a difficult adjustment, especially on this level.”
Basketball players, with their eight regular-season road trips this semester and the likelihood of lengthier departures in the post-season, present letters to each of their professors at the start of the semester detailing which class days they will miss.
Sometimes, professors allow them to take a test scheduled for a road game day before the player leaves for his basketball destination. Other times, Langstaff might travel with the team to administer the test when a professor declines to make exceptions.
Kissel conducts study tables on longer road trips. The goal of all this order is to ensure that players earnestly tackle their studies, Kissel said, that they leave SU with degrees. All this attention to academic detail also enhances a player’s chance to maintain his athletic eligibility.
“We like to think we make it difficult to not be eligible,” Langstaff said. “But it’s not impossible. Because ultimately the student is responsible for their own work and their class attendance.”
The freshmen like Triche and Southerland and Riley have more detailed, more structured study schedules than someone like Arinze Onuaku, a fifth-year senior with a 3.0 GPA. The Orange freshmen said navigating the class workload, combined with the demanding basketball schedule, was an arduous task that would overwhelm them without the aid of an ordered system.
“It’s definitely hard being a basketball player and a student,” Triche said. “Most of the time you’re spending on being a basketball player and on trying to get better. We’re not able to spend extra time with teachers that the other kids get the chance to do.”
“I’m gonna be honest – a lot of times I don’t want to come here after practice and after going to classes all through the day,” Jones said. “But it’s a relief once you get your work done and you can sit around and just relax and don’t have to at the last minute get this done and that done.”
Jones, a sophomore academically, said he tried and discarded five or six tutors since he arrived on the SU campus. Some explained things too quickly, he said, others took so long to clarify issues he “got nothing done.” But he and Southerland like Henry, a grad student in secondary special education with a concentration in social studies. Henry said each player improved his grades last semester.
Langstaff and Kissel appreciate those kind of success stories. Cooperation and effort, they say, form the cornerstones to the players’ academic success.
“The bottom line is you can’t do it unless they want to be involved. Or they are invested in it,” Kissel said. “The kids have a definite say in what they want to do, how they like their mentors, what classes they take and like. The most important thing is giving them a voice in the process. You can’t be successful unless they buy into it. And this group has bought into it.”
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