And the winner of the 2014 NCAA all-academic tournament is ...
We're about to find out just how well the 68 teams in the 2014 NCAA tournament perform on the court. Let's just say it's likely to be very different from how they've performed in the classroom.
Once again, Inside Higher Ed has offered up its own version of the NCAA tournament, playing out the matchups with a set of criteria designed to measure academic rather than athletic performance. The tournament uses the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate to determine a winner, meaning that this is an academic battle between teams, not universities as a whole. A tiebreaker is the NCAA's Graduation Success Rate, measuring how many players graduated within six years. The secondary tiebreaker, if necessary, is the Federal Graduation Rate.
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So who's your winner? None other than ... Kansas!
Yep, the Kansas Jayhawks win this tournament, which featured a Final Four that also included Memphis, BYU and Texas. Expected academic powerhouse Harvard got knocked out early, as did other notables such as Duke and UVA. Strange, huh?
Here's the whole bracket for your perusal:
So, congrats to Kansas. Don't stay out too late celebrating, gentlemen; there's another game yet to play. And also, apparently, some studying to do.
Check out more NCAA tournament coverage on Yahoo Sports:
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is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter.
