Gophers football and men’s basketball among programs shining academically in latest APR report

The Gophers football team’s Academic Progress Rate ranks fourth in the Big Ten, and men’s basketball is tied for first.

The Minnesota Star Tribune
May 6, 2025 at 8:21PM
Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle oversees a program that is thriving academically, according to the latest APR results. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The NCAA on Tuesday released its latest Academic Progress Rate (APR) for each member school — a metric that the organization uses to track the academic performance of Division I athletes — and the University of Minnesota’s teams continued to fare well.

Six Gophers teams received perfect multiyear scores of 1,000 in data that includes the 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, while seven others had scores of at least 990. Every Minnesota team was well above the multiyear score cutline of 930, a number the NCAA requires programs to meet to avoid penalties that include postseason bans and possible scholarship losses.

The Gophers’ perfect multiyear APRs came from basketball, cross-country and golf on the men’s side and gymnastics, hockey and volleyball on the women’s side. In addition, those six programs, plus baseball, women’s basketball, women’s golf, men’s hockey, women’s soccer, men’s swimming and diving and women’s tennis, had 1,000 scores for the 2023-24 school year.

Minnesota’s 992 multiyear APR in football ranks fourth in the Big Ten behind Ohio State (1,000), Michigan (996) and Northwestern (993). The Gophers’ APRs in the 2015 and 2023 reporting periods helped the team secure bowl bids when it didn’t reach the required six regular-season wins to make it. In both years, a strong APR landed the Gophers in a bowl game in Detroit because 5-7 teams with the best APRs could fill an unfilled bowl slot.

In men’s basketball, the Gophers’ 1,000 multiyear score shared the Big Ten lead with Indiana, Nebraska and USC.

The Gophers women’s basketball team’s APR of 986 is tied for 10th in the Big Ten with Purdue.

Here is a look at the multiyear APR for each Gophers team:

1,000: Men’s basketball, men’s cross-country, men’s golf, women’s gymnastics, women’s hockey, women’s volleyball

996: Baseball

993: Women’s swimming and diving

992: Football, women’s soccer

991: Women’s tennis, women’s track and field

990: Women’s golf, softball

989: Women’s cross-country

988: Women’s rowing

986: Women’s basketball

981: Men’s hockey

980: Men’s track and field

976: Men’s swimming and diving

966: Wrestling

about the writer

about the writer

Randy Johnson

College football reporter

Randy Johnson covers University of Minnesota football and college football for the Minnesota Star Tribune, along with Gophers hockey and the Wild.

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