Virginia Tech freshman Landers Nolley has not seen the court this season. The blue-chip wing hasn't been cleared by the NCAA. And that's reportedly due to the fact Nolley scored too high on the ACT with respect to his GPA (even though both met the NCAA threshold). That's according to Nolley's high school coach, Rory Welsh.
"He did extremely well [on the ACT]," Welsh said in a phone interview. "He's a very intelligent kid. He really has the natural ability to be an honor student. The type of focus [he had] his last year of high school, if he would've had that type of focus his freshman year and his sophomore year, he probably would end up being an Ivy League-type guy, because he has that type of intelligence level.
"So they're making him basically retake the test, simply because he did very well on it, which I thought was utterly stupid.
"Since he's been enrolled at Virginia Tech, ... he's on track to make the honor roll for his first semester."
Yes, it's quite stupid.
Yet another example of why the NCAA should get out of the eligibility business. The player made the required score. Unless the testing service or VT has a problem with it, the NCAA has no legit reason to cast doubt on the test. It's just wrong. https://t.co/emaPoxgGm5— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) November 13, 2018
The NCAA eligibility center prospective student-athlete review FAQ notes "PSA review triggers".
However, there is an optimistic resolution for Nolley and the Hokies around the corner.
A source tells me #Hokies basketball doesn't expect to have freshman Landers Nolley this week/weekend for the Charleston tournament, but the program is optimistic he'll be cleared by the following weekend's home game against St. Francis.— Mike Barber (@RTD_MikeBarber) November 13, 2018
Comments
Dear NCAA,
Given the news around VT lately, I hope this quickly turns into just a good laugh at NCAA ineptitude.
I guaran-dang-tee ya this wouldn't have been tolerated at UNCheat or Dook. Grrrr.....
Wasn't UNCs entire stance based around the fact that the NCAA had limited jurisdiction on academic issues? This is solely an academic issue...
Generally, I believe UNC's stance was that the NCAA has limited jurisdiction on regulating university class content. In Nolley's case the NCAA is disputing the validity of his ACT score to get into the university, which is something that they currently do oversee.
Still, I think it is total B.S. that they have an issue with Nolley and that it has taken them this long to address.
But isn't that completely up to the university to decide what ACT scores are admit-able?
There are minimum requirements for athletic eligibility that the NCAA sets. It's a sliding scale between GPA and SAT/ACT (i.e., a higher GPA requires a lower minimum test score and vice versa.)
HokieSpider is correct. University can admit who they want, but the player must meet certain GPA and ACT requirements for athletic eligibility.
But the NCAA does not oversee the ACT. The ACT is an organization which offers various test and then evaluates the performance of the test takers. Once a result is provided by ACT, how does the NCAA have the jurisdiction to question the assessment?
The ACT regularly does cancel results in they suspect cheating. Sometimes students are accused of cheating before they ever leave the testing center; more commonly, the ACT sends the students a letter. This usually happens when a test is red flagged either because of a significant score increase (like 500 or more points on the SAT within a 1-2 year period) or because of a high number of identical responses to another student seated nearby.
The fact it took five months to trigger this is ridiculous, but at least the triggers for what constitutes an "irregularity" is well defined.
Agreed, absolute and complete bullshit. This is something that should have been caught and reviewed before the student in question ever participated in an official team activity. Both factors that set off the flag (final HS GPA and ACT score) are set numbers that have not changed since him finishing high school. So the fact that the eligibility question was raised right when the season started is suspect. I would say shame on the NCAA, but they have no shame...just pockets that never seem deep enough.
I hope his new score comes back even higher than the first one.
It's pretty sick that the NCAA made him retake it. The whole purpose of the test is to help qualify admission into college. Once in college, and apparently performing at honor roll levels, the test score means nothing.
I would honestly hate to have to do that...I did very well on the SAT, but I took it like 2 years before I even stepped foot on campus as a student. It would suck for them to say "Know how you're in the middle of weed out engineering classes and overloaded on extracurricular activities (or in this case, D1 basketball)? Yeah, you also need to study for and retake a test you took years ago that probably has nothing to do with your classes now..."
Haha. Sounds like me in HS. Had a 2.x my first two years. Busted what would be an illegible SAT score. I was just a bad student with untreated ADHD. Made it up my last two by averaging 3.9.
So how is the ncaa planning on giving Nolley his 2(+maybe) games back???
That's what I want to know
They'll make it up to him by giving him a bill for a couple weeks' tuition since he's not an eligible student athlete and therefore can't receive an athletic scholarship
Will be four games at least if he is missing the entire tournament. This could be extremely damaging to Tech because of the depth in height. Every team in our likely path in the Charleston Classic has talented bigs. Ball State has two, Alabama has three possibly four and Purdue has three. Ball State the only saving grace is that if we are going to a fast lineup, they gave up the second most points in transition last season and do not seem to have corrected that so far this year.
Can someone explain the ACT scores in the chart above? Those numbers don't make sense. Are they adding each subject's scores together? For VT, the writing component isn't required so for math, science and english added together, the max score would be 36x3=108.
It's really, really bad. The NCAA has royally fucked up how it is interpreting the ACT. The ACT has several subsections. The SAT has a math, evidence based reading, and a writing section. Everyone is familiar with the 1600 Math/Reading score.
The ACT takes not only math, reading, and writing; it adds english and science as sections on the exam. The max score on a section is a 36. This is where it is REALLY FUCKING WEIRD. The ACT scores a composite of all the section for ease of access. I have never seen a school or institution combine sections like this saying 85 or 110. It is bizarre and almost an incorrect way to use the exam. I would expect them to say they need an 18 composite which allows students to rely on their strengths more.
Source: I read college applications at a school that upset UVA in the NCAA tournament.
Leg for the entire post. If I could give extra legs for this snippet, I would.
In this video, the interviewer says Nolley got a 27 on the ACT, around the 2:10 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkji-34UMK8
27 is solid but not ivy league good. This issue is dumber than I even thought it might be.
The ncaa is involved so it's beyond dumb, it's insanely asinine and makes them look inept (which they are)
It is roughly a 1270 SAT. Good score by VT standards. Would have been accepted on his own merits without basketball assuming he has a strong GPA.
That's the issue. He didn't have a strong GPA and they're acting like his score was fudged because it is "better than what his GPA would imply he's capable of". He went to a very poor school in a very poor area. I doubt there are tons of people there with high GPAs because schoolwork is likely not a major focus for most people there (unfortunately). That doesn't mean he isn't capable of doing the work and testing well. I know people who graduated college with under a 3.0 that are now pursuing even higher degrees. Essentially you screw around your first couple years before buckling down and getting serious and you'll struggle to get yourself out of the hole you dug, but their last couple years were proof enough they are capable to do the work. It is pretty jacked up.
But a sub 3.0 GPA with a 1270 isn't weird at all. They are super common because they are usually very bright kids who don't prioritize school or have something going on behind the scenes. This is super super common in the admissions world and doesn't raise an eyebrow. If he was below a 2.0 it would be weird but he would be ineligible at that point.
I had a friend like that. He was almost failing out of school and scored a fairly high score on the SAT with near perfect on the reading(?) section. He just was sick a bunch for a while and never made up his work and then just pretty much blew off most of his classes except for shop.
That was me. I just couldn't motivate myself to bear down on schoolwork in high school, and my math wasn't all that, but reading pulled me way up on the SAT. Of course, then I was branded lazy. And of course, they were right, but I know it happens all the time.
It's Ivy League athlete good.
True dat.
I'd say drag the NCAA as much as possible for this, but they don't give a damn how bad their PR is since they have no incentive to.
If this was Tyler Hansbrough or JJ Redick, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Wow what a total joke, there's gotta be tens of thousands of kids who fall outside these ranges every year and does the ncaa question the validity of the tests in all of those cases? (Really I don't know do they?)
Also a 27 isn't even thaaat good. It's easy to see how someone could cruise in class (especially if they already spend most of their time playing a sport like I don't know, basketball, at an elite level) and still make a 27 if they're a good test taker.
The real issue for me is he obviously had the gpa to get into tech. Combine that with to be eligible for the ncaa you need a 17 on the ACT (at least when I was in school) ......if he were cheating to get into college, that the cheaters would say, "let's get him a 27" is ludicrous. If cheating had happened he would have a nice 20 give or take a pt. Get him eligible, not get him noticed.
We have to be close to the same age. I'm not sure many people much older or younger than we are will get this one.
This seriously was the first thing that popped in my head. I remember watching this movie several times as a kid. Weird Al was (and still is IMO) a genius.
I love this movie. Weird Al is a comedic genius
FTFY
Found my wife's account
1. Because of course you did.
2. I specifically used "good" because I wanted the catchier headline. More often that involves writing how people talk, not proper English, at least from the marketing and copywriting I picked up.
1. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2. Fair enough. I just cringed at the irony of a grammatical error in a headline pointing out the intelligence of our students.
In situations like this, do you call the grammar police on yourself, or...?
Ooooh, bonus leg for that one
Joe be all like:
hahahahahaha. you win
Psst, claim you were being ironic. Then you are now a genius satirist.
tbf, this was my exact first thought when I read the headline.
How is this not on ESPN this seems so outrageously stupid and unfair.
Agreed, who do we tweet this story to so that it gains more attention?
I say play him anyway and point to UNC as precedence. UNC has shown the NCAA can't do anything about academic issues relating to the university.
Looks like the NCAA wants Landers to get his ACT together
The problem with taking the ACT again is that it is likely he'd score higher, especially since the first score was legit (as we know it was). First time my son took the ACT he got a 29, and when he took it again (actually trying hard since he was actually trying for scholarship eligibility) he got a 32. So I would caution against expecting a test re-take to quickly resolve this.
Why would a second score higher than the first NOT resolve this?
The original score seemed high. If it is confirmed, then he's good to go.
If it's low, abnormally low, then there is an issue.
If he gets a higher score on the re-take it proves that the first score is legitimate, not that he cheated on this one, too.
Ah, hadn't looked at it that way. OK, legs for all then.
It bears repeating in this thread
Landers Nolley enrolled at Virginia Tech on June 1st. Its November 14th, and we don't expect to have resolution on this until November 19th, over 5 and a half months after he enrolled at Virginia Tech. And they're doing this because they are essentially accusing him of cheating because of his GPA, when everyone around him is saying his GPA is held low because he slacked his first couple years of HS.
If you're going to accuse someone of cheating like this, look into it, first. Look into their GPA the last couple years of high school. Look into his grades his senior year. If they're excellent, and the test scores are good, then its pretty damn clear what happened. But you incompetent idiots in the NCAA couldn't be bothered to do even that, and you're holding a kid out because you think there is a possibility he might have cheated with absolutely zero evidence to that fact.
Oh, and yes, this is what the NCAA clearinghouse is for. The clearinghouse openly tells kids to enroll as soon as the Junior year is done because it can take up to 6 months for a resolution in these cases. Except here, its already 5 and a half months from the moment Nolley enrolled, so either our staff dropped the ball on getting him in that system (considering how attentive we are to detail, especially in regards to basketball, I'd say the chances of that are slim to none) or the NCAA royally dropped the ball here, screwed this up months after it should have been resolved, and passed the buck off to the player and school for their gross incompetence. Either way, its absolute horseshit this has happened, that its keeping a player who, for all intents and purposes should be eligible from playing, 6 months after he started taking college classes.
And lets also remind ourselves, UNC got caught red handed falsifying GPAs by giving out grades to classes that didn't exist to keep players eligible in football and basketball. Caught so incredibly red handed that everyone involved was fired, and the NCAA even admitted UNC did it. But they absolved themselves of the case because, as they said at the time, they did not have the jurisdiction over academic matters. And yet here we are with Nolley. So yeah, I stand by my belief that if this was any 'blue blood' program, there is no chance in hell that the NCAA would have cared.
Posted this in the other thread...
The timing is crappy, but the ACT is only given at certain times of the year. Granted he was enrolled in the summer, but that also didn't mean that he was "on the team and playing." He could have redshirted, gotten hurt, been kicked off for some reason, whatever. It's not until he's ready to actually play, and the season starts that it becomes something that can be addressed, and in all reality actually handled.
This is not true. As part of his LOI and agreement to a scholarship, as soon as he enrolled, he is held to all the standards required of student athletes and should have been treated as such. The NCAA could have taken action even before that, calling into question his ACT as part of the NCAA Clearinghouse process before he was even able to enroll at Tech. They did not do so and allowed this issue to fester into the actual season. Even if they had waited until Tech began official workouts, that is still months ago and this issue should have been resolved. The ACT is offered in any number of places so getting Nolley into a test could have been arranged if needed. I doubt that Tech just stood by and waited for the next closest ACT to Tech campus to get this done.
So, he was cleared, sort of, then the issue came up? Or it was an issue in June?
The ACT is only administered a few times a year. And not during the summer. They won't hold a special exam just for a single kid, or a few athletes. It's a tight process. And the registration is around 5 weeks in advance. Yes, it's given at a bunch of locations, but the timing is the issue. Even if the NCAA flagged it in June, the first test time was September 9 and then October 28; again with the 5 week registration deadline. The ACT doesn't care who you are or why you are taking it, so no special treatment.
Explains the delay, but does not explain the NCAA's incompetence and inability to do basic fact checking re: Nolley's academic trajectory to explain his test score. A five minute call to a guidance counselor or his head coach as Berman did was all that was needed.
Nothing explains the NCAA at all.
Actually the ACT is administered in June and July as well. If the NCAA identified the issue in a timely manner, He might have been able to take the test on those dates, or the September date, depending on how much time Landers felt he would need to prepare. The whole guilty until proven innocent thing is over the top, especially considering there seems to be nothing other than score itself causing the review.
He wouldn't have had time to register for the June test. And possibly not the July one either...
Agreed it's outlandish and silly.
Bingo. I'd go a little further than you did and say the NCAA SHOULD have taken care of this during the Clearinghouse process, because...this is a Clearinghouse matter. Once the kid has passed through the Clearinghouse in high school, and then subsequently has enrolled at college, Clearinghouse should be OVER. The kids have deadlines, the schools have deadlines; the NCAA should be held accountable to similar deadlines.
If a dude paid somebody to take the SAT/ACT, and he is a poor student in high school, it's going to come out in the wash anyway. Let the university academic process take care of it at that point.
Normally I'd agree with you, but what if some university decided that they couldn't pass their athletes so they came up with fake classes to boost their college GPAs and ensure eligibility. Then what if the university was caught doing so by the NCAA? Surely the NCAA would then punish the school for such dastardly deeds, right? right?
EDIT: Let every university's academic process (except for UNC) take care of it at that point.
I'm really curious to know how this plays out from here and where is their point where there's an issue. If he beats his ACT score, great, no problem and he's ready to roll. But what happens if he scores lower? Is it going to be an issue with the NCAA if he scores say a 25?
I can only imagine what is must be like for the player/coaches because i'm sure the NCAA isn't giving them much of an answer too.
Don't Know how to imbed tweet.. Hilarious
Bilas beats down Hoo
Reading any tweet from any Wahoo
Any truth to this?
One of the replies to Bilas on Twitter says that to take the ACT, you have to upload a photo to their site when you register to take the test, and then provide photo ID the day of the test to prove you are who you say you are.
If this is the case, how can the NCAA even begin to question this?
I remember having to show photo ID when I took the ACT 25 years ago; can't speak on uploading a photo since back then a 28.8k modem was "high speed internet".
If I'm remembering correctly, they didn't even let us have a fucking water bottle. These tests are almost impossible to cheat on.
28.8k? I'm sure it will surprise no one that I hadn't even considered owning a computer twenty five years ago and had no idea there was even a real reason to do the internet thing.
While I have no doubt there is some smartie pants out there scamming the system somewhere, it seems like the advances in security are prodigious compared with the olden days and there's no excuse for the NCAA to be doing this stuff. I think it's a Tobacco Road conspiracy to continue to keep VT out of the rarified air of the upper echelons of the ACC. It's rigged, I tell ya. Sad.
Nobody has ever made a fake id for use...
so...register and upload a photo of your smart asian friend. Then get smart asian friend a fake id with your name on it?
Peanuts in the Adidas/Nike pay-to-play scheme of things...
The ACT proctors have no idea who is walking thru that door. There isn't an ACT just for athletes.
Well that's just because UNCheat doesn't run it.
But then the ACT would have record of an Asian Landers Nolley complete with picture and ID.
If someone made a fake ID to get someone else to take the SAT/ACT for them, they have other issues and I wouldn't want them anywhere near my team.
The NCAA is taking an interesting position here.
They have minimum standards, because they don't want their "student" athletes too dumb to be able to follow the minimum instructions to keep them in line and padding the NCAA's coffers.
And they apparently have maximum standards, one can only assume because they don't want any student athletes to be smart enough to cogently agitate for the end of the NCAA's reign of Error.
The NCAA has done many things that are repugnant and tone-deaf. This may be among the top-5 in my book, especially when contrasted against their treatment of UNC, Duke, Miami, at least half the SEC, etc, etc, etc...
That's a misinterpretation. Finding anomalies or incongruities is not setting a maximum standard. That said, using two data points isn't finding a statistically significant anomaly or incongruity.
And deliberately so. Why would I deliberately cast the NCAA position in such a worse way than their already ridiculously bad one?
touche
On the positive side, since he did so well on the first test, we can definitely say that Nolley is a "heady" player.
A real student of the game
That'd be good. Especially if he's also a gym rat. A really dedicated, first-in, last-out kind of guy.
Is there any news about this? I thought we expected results this week on the retest.
Ideally should be cleared by our game against St. Francis (11/24)