• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: May 7, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:30 a.m.

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The latest wave of results from the NCAA’s Academic Performance Rating arrived Tuesday, this time with some teeth that affected several state schools.

• LSU’s baseball program lost .34 of a single scholarship. The Tigers men’s basketball program avoided any penalties this year, but sits right on the borderline for future penalties if it loses any players between now and next May.
• Southern’s football program was docked 8.75 scholarships and four hours of practice time a week.
• The Louisiana-Lafayette men’s basketball program lost two hours of practice time a week.
• Centenary will have to surrender the equivalent of 2.82 scholarships and four hours of practice time in baseball and a full scholarship in men’s basketball.
• The University of New Orleans baseball program will be limited to 9.87 scholarships and lose four hours of practice time.

The APR is a point system based on student-athletes’ academic eligibility and retention during both an individual academic year and over a rolling four-year intervals.

The total number of APR points gained by each athletic program is divided by the total number possible. The NCAA has set 925 (or 92.5 percent) as the standard which programs are expected to meet each year and for each cycle.

If a program falls below 925, it is subject to a stair-step series of penalties. Those penalties increase in severity if that program dips below 900 for a single year or over the course of the cycle.

Not all the APR news was gloomy.

The LSU men’s tennis program scored 1,000, the fourth consecutive year that program has topped LSU’s charts. The tennis team was one of eight in the Southeastern Conference that notched a perfect score.

Other LSU teams with APR scores of 970 or above included gymnastics (986), women’s golf (985), women’s tennis (980), volleyball (975) and men’s golf (972).  Sixteen of LSU’s 20 sports posted scores of 950 or higher.

LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri said he knew the scholarship reduction was coming because two players left the program last season before their eligibility was up and without finishing the spring semester in good standing. In APR parlance, those players are considered “0-for-2,” which triggers the penalty phase.

Because the LSU men’s basketball program did not have any 0-for-2 hits, it will not absorb any scholarship losses.

“Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to be talking about the APR and it’s something we hope someday soon we’re not talking about,” said Mainieri, who is nearing the end of his second season. The baseball program was stung by a sub-900 APR in 2005.

“One of my goals when I took over was to see kids winning in the classroom and on the field. The bottom line is we want all of our players to graduate. What we have to do is slowly and progressively get our kids to perform academically, so we’re not below the 92.5 percent number and never come close to that level again.”

Mainieri absorbed the scholarship loss this spring, playing the 2008 season with 11.36 scholarships.

“We’ve already taken the penalty this year, so it will be behind us,” Mainieri said. “By the time the dust settled after last year, we lost a player and a recruit to the pro draft and a couple of kids transferred, so the scholarship level we ended up with was below 11.7.

“We decided to get it over with right now and take the hit. What I hate about that is that the kids who lose out are the ones who I would have liked to have rewarded for their progress last season. But because a couple of their teammates didn’t do what they needed to before they left, we weren’t able to reward those kids this season.”