From: (DELETED)@lehigh.edu
To: HoopTime@HoopTimeOnline.com
Subject: Academics

How quickly you forget the academic status of Bucknell's own Charles Lee while you take a shot at Lehigh and Joe Knight. Lee had to sit out pretty much an entire season, Joe Knight will be back soon. I guess you prefer forgot you own team's shortcomings when it comes to academics.

Out of courtesy, we tried replying to the e-mail first, before publicly posting it and our response. That message came back undeliverable.

Hopefully the person who sent it will see this:

We have already addressed this whole "your own team" stuff, no need to rehash that.

As for Charles Lee's academic stats as a freshman and Joe Knight's ongoing saga, there is simply no comparison. Apples and oranges, as they say.

In Lee's freshman season, Pat Flannery held him out of action the final 19 games so he could concentrate on academics. It is important to note that Lee was eligible by both Bucknell and NCAA standards.

Flannery has a long history of handling freshmen in that manner. Realizing the difficulties some kids have adjusting to the academic challenges of a school like Bucknell, he oft opts to make a short-term sacrifice of having a kid on the court for the long-term gain of keeping a kid on track academically.

Lee is certainly not the only student at a Patriot League school to have found the adjustment from high school challenging. But at no time has anyone suggested that
Lee did not fit the academic profile at Bucknell. Nobody has ever accused Bucknell of letting a kid in who did not have the academic credentials necessary to get admitted if he did not play a sport.

Certainly Lee did not leave a "safety school," spend a year at a community college and then show up at Bucknell.

Remember, as it says on the league's Web site:

The Patriot League, which was founded on the principles of admitting athletes who are academically representative of their class.

Maybe Knight really is representative of the typical Lehigh student. Maybe there are non-athletes at Lehigh who followed that same path.

Looking at Lehigh's own Web site, though, we doubt it. According to the school's site, for transfer students:

Lehigh prefers at least one full year of college experience and a cumulative grade point average of 3.25.

Lehigh has said during his year at a community college in Texas, Knight got over a 3.0. So let's do some speculative math here. We will assume that Knight averaged 15 credits (5 courses) per semester at High Point. Aan in the holiday spirit, let's be generous. Let's assume he had a 2.5 GPA there. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that Knight kicked things up a couple notches in those community college classes. Let's say he took 18 credits each semester (6 courses) with a 3.5 GPA. That comes out to an overall GPA of 2.875. Not horrible by any stretch, but nowhere close to the 3.25 the school says is preferred.

The school's site also says:

All students must be in good standing with their previous college to be eligible for admission to Lehigh.

I suppose it is open to interpretation how that applies to someone who leaves a less-demanding four-year school due to grades, then spends a year taking community college courses.

Less vague is the language in Lehigh's course catalog:

The academic performance at the college level is the primary focus when giving consideration to admission.

Candidates who have been dropped for poor scholarship, or who are not in good standing, or who have been released for disciplinary reasons are not eligible for admission.

Look, as we have said before, we are all for people getting second chances. We are not saying Knight is not bright enough to handle the coursework at Lehigh. All we are asking is is Knight's academic credentials would have gotten him into Lehigh if he was not an extremely talented basketball player seems ludicrous.

Keep in mind, athletic scholarships are still a new concept in the Patriot League. Across the Lehigh Valley at Lafayette, they don't even offer them yet. A big part of the reason Lafayette does not have scholarships and that schools like Bucknell and Colgate were slow to go the scholarship route is because critics were worried this was what was going to happen.

The whole concept of the Patriot League is supposed to be that you can do things right and still be competitive in athletics. When you throw out that concept, there is little to separate the Patriot from the MAACs, NECs and America Easts. Aside from some of those oldtimers in Worcester who constantly whine about Holy Cross' decision to join the league, we don't know anybody who would want that.