Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

From left, Jeff Foote, Alex Tyler, assistant coach Zach Spiker and Jason Hartford watch a DVD of the Stanford-Northwestern basketball game, while Louis Dale peeks between the seats, during their charter flight from Ithaca to Los Angeles on Tuesday. The Big Red faces the Stanford Cardinal in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament on Thursday, March 20, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.

Patrick Shanahan/Sports Information

Steve Donahue, the Robert E. Gallagher '44 Head Coach of Men's Basketball, explains positioning to center Jeff Foote and other team members during practice at Loara High School in Anaheim, Calif., March 18.

The men's basketball team at Cornell has performed brilliantly on the court all season. Now, the team has been honored for its off-court achievements by earning a Final Four spot in InsideHigherEd.com's 2008 academic bracket.

Using the NCAA tournament brackets announced March 15, InsideHigherEd has added a twist by adapting the NCAA's own Academic Progress Rate (APR) criteria for each of the 64 teams.

In other words, instead of scoring baskets, the teams went head-to-head academically. The result: Davidson College of North Carolina, Belmont University of Nashville, Tenn., and the University of North Carolina join Cornell in this special Final Four.

Cornell, with an exceptionally high 978 APR score, beat out Stanford, Austin Peay State University and the University of Oregon. Belmont's 994 APR score defeated Cornell, and Davidson College's perfect 1,000 APR beat Belmont. Scores of 925 APR or lower represent the equivalent of 50 percent graduation rates.

The NCAA developed the APR to discern how student athletes progress toward graduation. It is calculated using academic eligibility and retention factors. Typically men's collegiate basketball programs have lower APR scores, and teams earning 925 or lower can expect to lose athletic scholarship slots.

Last year, Graham Dow '07 became the first Cornell men's player to earn first-team Academic All-America honors, and he landed on the 2006-07 ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA team. It was the second straight year for a Cornell player to make the list. For his four years, Dow posted a 3.99 grade point average, majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology.

In 2005-06, Lenny Collins earned an Academic All-America spot on the third team, as did Jeff Gaca in 1993.