Liberty University during the last 12 months organized a committee of faculty, staff and coaches to address academic performance of Flames student-athletes.

The school was being proactive. The NCAA announced yesterday that Liberty would forfeit two men's basketball scholarships for that team's failure to reach the Academic Progress Rate baseline. The APR measured eligibility, retention and graduation of scholarship players on the 6,272 Division I teams through four years.

"Unfortunately, from the years of 2003-04 through 2006-07, we had a substantial number of men's basketball players leave our program," Jeff Barber, LU's athletic director since January 2006, said in a school statement. "In addition, nearly all left Liberty academically ineligible according to NCAA standards.

"The combination of these two factors resulted in our low APR score for the program."

Hampton University lost one men's basketball scholarship and one in men's indoor track for substandard APR scores. VCU, VMI, Old Dominion, Norfolk State and Longwood drew sanctions, lesser for the most part, in various sports. Nationally the NCAA slapped 218 teams with some form of penalty. In addition to scholarship forfeiture, sanctions can include loss of practice time and loss of postseason eligibility.

The sports programs at Virginia, Virginia Tech, Richmond, William & Mary, James Madison, Radford and George Mason achieved sufficient APR scores.

Notable among prominent programs disciplined yesterday: The University of Southern California lost a pair of men's basketball scholarships, Tennessee lost a men's basketball scholarship, and Washington State lost eight football scholarships. UAB lost two men's basketball scholarships and nine on the football side.

Sanctioned schools are required by the NCAA to submit an improvement plan, and those that fail to meet the goals in the NCAA-accepted improvement plan are subject to more severe penalties the following year.

It's all part of the academic reform package the NCAA introduced in 2004. At that time, NCAA President Myles Brand projected that the fresh gauge of academic progress, a more sophisticated metric than previously used graduation rates, represented a transformation in college sports. The NCAA wanted a system that measured academic performance and student-athlete retention on an annual basis, then combine that data with graduation rates.

An APR of 925 is the cut line for a team, with points awarded for each student-athlete based on maintaining eligibility, remaining part of the program, and graduating. The average, single-year APR for all DI student-athletes is 961, yesterday's NCAA stats reflect. That's a four-point increase since data collection began four years ago. The NCAA said fewer academically-ineligible student-athletes are leaving programs than before, and that is part of the reason for the improvement.

Men's teams with the highest APRs are fencing (977), water polo (975) and gymnastics (973). The worst were baseball (938), football (934) and basketball (928).

Women's teams with the highest APRs were crew (985), lacrosse (984) and field hockey (983). Bowling (941) had the lowest women's APR.