The Gamecocks posted an overall athletics department GPA of 3.017, bettering the 2.946 mark their athletes posted last year.
Only rifle (2.846), football (2.585) and men’s basketball (2.435) missed the mark, but the football and basketball teams had higher GPAs than the year before.
The football team increased by 16 percentage points, the basketball team by 39 (tied with women’s basketball for the largest improvement over the previous year).
“The (GPA) of this football program has been on a steady rise and will continue to rise,” Gamecocks football coach Jack Crowe told The Star last week.
“I think when we first started tracking this it was 2.23. That’s what I focus on … how well do they do in class?
“When your GPA is solid, you have a solid academic program. All the rest of it, to some degree, is circumstantial. If you’re in the class, what kind of grades did you make? That’s sort of the nuts and bolts of it.”
JSU women’s teams occupied the top four — and six of the top seven — spots in the academic standings. Volleyball, soccer and women’s tennis all posted team marks higher than 3.5.
The women’s tennis team recently received Public Recognition from the NCAA for landing within the top 10 percent of Academic Progress Rates in its sport.
The positive GPA report comes on the heels of last week’s pronouncement of the men’s basketball program receiving a postseason ban and other APR-related sanctions for the upcoming season for failing to meet the conditions of a previous waiver against penalties.
