BATON ROUGE, Louisiana -- Last season, the Southern men’s basketball team finished with its best record in Southwestern Athletic Conference play since 2005.The 13-5 mark was good enough for second in the conference, but the Jaguars couldn’t reap any of the benefits of their success because of academic-related penalties.
The NCAA had handed down a postseason ban on SU, thanks to substandard scores in its Academic Progress Rate.
It was Roman Banks’ first season in Baton Rouge, and the newly hired coach didn’t limit his accomplishments to the court in his inaugural campaign. In the past year, Southern ranked in the top three percentiles in Division I APR turnaround, making the Jaguars eligible for postseason play this year.
“We took the job in a very tough situation, and our penalty was practice time, no postseason play and scholarships,” Banks said. “We came in and turned academics around and wrote a waiver to the NCAA allowing us to go to postseason play. We can go to postseason play, but then there’s still a three-year period of this probation that we’re on. That means that we can’t falter.”
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