There’s something to be said about striving for a perfect graduation rate. It appears that West Virginia has it backwards and is shooting for a graduation rate of zero percent. Maybe the signs were in the air when West Virginia players wore their misspelled NIT championship shirts.

Bob Huggins is leaving Kansas State to become the new coach of West Virginia after John Beilein left to take the Michigan job.

It’s obvious that West Virginia has no interest in its basketball players graduating from college. The incarceration and recidivism rates will surely increase and put WVU at #1 in the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls if those are taken into account.

As one might imagine, Kansas State isn’t very happy with Huggy.

“I asked him, ‘Bob, do you think leaving now is the right thing to do?’ And he said, ‘No,”‘ athletic director Tim Weiser said at a news conference. “Then I said, ‘How many times in your life have you known what the right thing is to do and not done it?’ And he said, ‘Never.”‘

Why don’t I believe him? That would be like driving under the influence when you know you shouldn’t. Huggy would never do that.

Richard Lapchick is back again with his annual downer before the college basketball tournament extravaganza…the NCAA Tournament teams graduation success rate. Lets take a look at the local teams:

Virginia: 85% of all Men’s bball players graduated
Virginia Tech: 71%
VCU: 70%
George Washington: 70%
Georgetown: 64%
Old Dominion: 50%
Maryland: 18% OUCH…wait, WHAT?? 18%????

It appears as if our riotous neighbors in College Park have a bit of a problem graduating their players. Maybe they should stop burning books and start reading them? Maryland would have a 13% success rate if you weren’t including players who transferred to other schools and received degrees, entered from junior colleges and/or who got a degree more than six years after enrolling at UMD. Just so you know how they got to these numbers, “[t]he Institute reviewed 1999 – 00 graduation (six-year) rates, with a four class average (freshman classes of 1996 – 97, 1997 – 98, 1998 – 99, and 1999 – 00).”

Gary, how about teaching a little bit more than just X’s and O’s to your kids huh? Perhaps they could learn important things that books tell you, like where Canada is and most importantly DO NOT go shooting guns around the White House!

Link: Actual PDF of all Schools in the NCAA Tournament and their graduation Rates