The SAT that Robert Dozier took while orally committed to Memphis was later invalidated, ESPN’s Mark Schlabach is reporting.
Dozier later reneged on his Memphis commitment and signed with Georgia, which red-flagged Dozier’s test scores and denied admission.
After spending a year at prep school with other Memphis signees, Dozier ended up going to Memphis. He helped the Tigers reach the 2008 Final Four, the same Final Four that now could be vacated because of Derrick Rose’s invalidated SAT score.
Reports Schlabach:
According to Dozier’s academic records, which were obtained by ESPN.com through Georgia open records laws, he took the SAT for the first time on Dec. 6, 2003, about five months after he verbally committed to play for the Tigers. Dozier scored a 1,260 of a possible 1,600 (the highest score at the time) on the test, according to the records.
Dozier later reneged on his commitment to Memphis, and signed a national letter of intent with Georgia in March 2004. But Georgia admission officials were immediately alarmed by Dozier’s high SAT score, which they claimed didn’t correlate with his below-average academic performance at Lithonia (Ga.) High School or his previous scores on the PSAT, a preparatory exam for the SAT.
In its report to UGA president Michael Adams, the school’s faculty admissions review committee, which evaluates the admission applications of prospective student-athletes, recommended a “strong deny” in Dozier’s case.
Dozier did a retake of the test and scored 720 – 540 points lower than his earlier score, reports Schlabach.
Note: It should be noted that after Dozier was denied admission at Georgia, he spent a year at the prep school and was cleared by the NCAA Clearing House before being admitted at Memphis.
This is interesting, but since he retook the test and spent a year at prep school before joining a college team, his eligibility is not questioned in any way.
That is correct. And he was cleared by the NCAA Clearing House, which I assume had all the testing information.
When is all this crap going to stop????!!! Enough already!!!! Get a life!
If anyone thinks that cheating on the SAT/ ACT doesn’t happen all the time, including by non athletes, I’ve got some shares in the Centrepoint Development to sell them.
These horses are already out of the barn, the testing agencies need to close the doors before any more get out……..
According to the article, out of about 3 million SATs taken each year, only about 1000 are invalidated and there’s only allegations of cheating on about 2000 of them.
Also, the prep school mentioned has been kind of invalidated by the NCAA. The NCAA no longer recognized that prep school. And, that prep school supplied a number of recruits to Memphis over the last nine years.
Now, I’m not saying that Coach Calipari is dirty. It could easily be that the Memphis admissions office is a bit lax in these background checks. But, it makes me nervous that Coach Calipari was associated with a school that is under a lot of scrutiny right now. We’ve been on probation before and another bad scandal could cost us dearly. Remember SMU football?
And then Dosier graduates from Memphis in four years ?
Yeah. Ok.
If that doesn’t make a few people nervous about what Calipari is doing I don’t know what will.
Don’t be fooled by those who try to pretend that Georgia or other schools were “better” by passing on Dozier. That angle on the story is a fabrication and is designed to dig at Memphis.
First of all, Georgia was in the midst of recieving penalties for academic fraud at the time. And bear in mind that the administration let an assistant coach teach a class for credit with players enrolled, and no one in the department checked on their attendance. Come on people!
Secondly, Dozier’s 2nd score was not good enough for the sliding scale, so he had to do another year to raise his gpa. In other words, GA didn’t pass on him because of morality – they passed on him because he wasn’t eligible that year anyway. Why do you think they didn’t comment further? To protect Robert? No, it was to keep from answering that question, so they can pretend to take the high road.
Robert didn’t end up at Memphis after his prep year because no one else would take him after that. We had a previous commitment from him before he decomitted around the time of the test and committed to GA. He committed back to us shortly after he began his year of prep school. It wasn’t a last resort in either case. After he finished his year and the NCAA cleared him, he enrolled at Memphis.
Also, I’m sure Gary knew the story since he was covering the Tigers for the CA at the time, and the rumor was out there then. There is no way a beat writer doesn’t hear that kind of stuff. It wasn’t really much of a story really, but now he brought it up as if he just heard it because it makes him look like he is breaking news. What I’m saying is that rather than reporters telling a story that reveals a pattern, they are telling only the parts of stories that seem to imply a pattern, because they have to write stories, and recycling old news in this way is easy.