“I’d imagine players are forced to miss a lot of classes with all of the traveling demands placed on them playing a D1 schedule. What do your players specifically do to keep on top of their work? Do they mainly just get all their assignments done on the bus rides? I’d imagine having group projects, in addition to the assignments, would cause many headaches. Thanks and good luck.”

Joe Curtin

Grad Student, MIS Major

The first part of the answer would be, basketball and all of the other teams — players and coaches — are cognizant of the challenges when competition calls for travel away from campus, and so with men’s basketball, I’m responsible for the schedule outside of league play, and we do all that we can to minimize missed class time. For example, in the fall semester for men’s basketball this year, we’ll miss a total of five days in the first semester, and three of those days will be during Thanksgiving week. In the second semester, we will only miss one day of class time, and our away games are on the weekend or on the break. We miss a total of six days, that’s pretty good. [Throughout the] NCAA, there are some special academic support funds, so we have laptops that can travel with us, as all the teams do. Teams that are traveling can request a laptop and stay on top of their assignments, so many of the guys do their work on the bus.