Don’t hold your breath hoping Lamar University basketball coach Steve Roccaforte is going to sign a big man to enhance the Cardinals chances of wining another Southland Conference championship next year.

Roccaforte, as a result of the NCAA’s Academic Progress Report announced this week, won’t be able to bring in a big man, a guard or anybody else. Lamar is being docked two scholarships for coming in below the mandated minimum on academic progress.

Contrary to published reports, however, the Cardinals probably won’t be operating with 11 scholarships next season. Anybody who is already on scholarship, including three players signed in the early period — guards Brandon Moton, Skyler Williams and Charlie Harper — will be able to play next season.

Lamar has nine scholarship players returning, so, unless somebody leaves, it will have 12 players on scholarship. If a player expected to return next year does leave, Roccaforte wouldn’t be able to replace him and the Cardinals would have to go with 11 scholarship players.

If all 12 players on scholarship as of now are with Lamar for the 2008-09 season, it would lose the second scholarship in the 2009-10 season.

Roccaforte wouldn’t comment on who the players were that caused Lamar to come up short on the APR. He did point out that after Saturday, when Darren Hopkins, Lamar Sanders and Currye Todd graduate, he will be six-for-six in seniors getting diplomas since he became head coach.

The scores the NCAA used to determine the latest APR covered academic performance from 2003-07. Athletes earn one point for remaining academically eligible each semester and another point each semester they remain at the school, accumulating a maximum of four points each year.

Schools lose points when players leave without graduating.

In Lamar’s case, it is believed to have been penalized over three players, including 7-footer James Davis, who left school or were kicked off the team, and one, Alan Daniels, who departed in the middle of a semester for an opportunity in professional basketball overseas.

One of the Lamar players involved underscores how poorly conceived the APR legislation is. This particular player was caught smoking marijuana shortly after school began two years ago. He was promptly suspended from the team and opted to quit school and go home.

Roccaforte would have been better off under APR guidelines to look the other way and keep the player on the team so as to not be penalized at the end of the year. He opted to do the right thing and wound up losing APR points.

Over 20 Texas Division 1 programs were penalized with scholarship losses, although curiously none of the state’s major schools apparently got hit. Roccaforte said that’s because those schools have full time staff who do nothing but work on appeals and seek waivers.

That might explain why the University of Texas, with the lowest football graduation rate in the Big 12, as well as a bulging list of arrests that took players out of school, didn’t lose any scholarships.

LU athletic director Billy Tubbs said the school appealed its case to the NCAA but got turned down. Tubbs also said he thinks Lamar’s coaches and academic advisors are doing an excellent job within their means, and that mid majors are getting hit hardest because the APR is ultimately about finances.

“The BCS schools are spending lots of money on extra tutors and academic advisors,” Tubbs said. “We spend what we can but obviously we can’t match what the bigger schools are doing. To deal with this, mid majors are going to have to spend double and triple what they have budgeted for academics.