At 8 a.m. Saturday, May 3, the test books flew open. The sharpened No. 2 pencils began bubbling in Scantron sheets. And the man sketched in as the future of the Terrapin men’s basketball team began to fill out the rest of his life.
With a neatly shaped afro and a chiseled 6-foot-4 frame complete with broad shoulders used to carrying the weight of high expectations, Sean Mosley approached the test with little nervousness. He knew he would pass. He had done the work; he had put in the time.
His future fanbase was not afforded the same air of confidence.
Mosley, a Baltimore native, has spent the last two years as the talk of every Terp basketball message board. Fans drove to his high school games from all over the state, wanting to see for themselves if the kid from St. Frances Academy in Baltimore was really worth all the fuss.
But the deciding factor in whether Mosley will ever step foot onto the Comcast Center floor in a red, white, black and gold jersey was being filled by a graphite tip.
Despite the hype surrounding his pending arrival in College Park, Mosley still does not know if he has achieved the minimum necessary score to play Division I basketball. With Mosley’s 2.7 GPA, he will need to score roughly a 730 on the College Board’s national standardized test, a mark Mosley fell short of on his first try. The board has switched to a sliding scale based on both GPA and SAT scores, and the writing section of the SAT is not counted.
“I’m confident that I got it this time,” he said.
Mosley said he initially struggled with his test-taking skills and remembering basic algebra – which he hasn’t studied in several years – more than anything. He worked with several teachers from St. Frances on developing his process-of-elimination skills.
“I just tried to find different ways to get to the answers,” Mosley said.
When he joins the Terps, Mosley can expect more of the same.
With the Terp program – and men’s basketball players across the country – struggling with academics, as evidenced by an ACC-low 906 score on this year’s Academic Progress Rate, efforts have been made by the university to help the players.
Associate Athletics Director of Academic Support and Career Development Anton Goff said improving the academic standards of the men’s basketball team is a high priority for the university and athletic department, and the emphasis begins immediately, as soon as a player enters the program.
“For basketball, what happens is they are put into what we call our intensive learning program,” Goff said. “We help teach them things like study strategies, time management and test-taking management.”
Unlike other student-athletes at the university, who receive eight weekly hours of tutoring, men’s basketball players must attend 10 to 14 hours of mandatory academic counseling per week, working with both class-specific tutors and more general academic mentors.
For Mosley, this means he will receive similar academic support to what he used in preparing for the SATs the past few months. The future Terp went to St. Frances teachers in various departments looking for help in taking the test, which he said he knew was crucial.
The results aren’t in quite yet. The hard work hasn’t seen its final result. Sean Mosley is not yet officially eligible to star for the Terps next basketball season.
The last finals at the university this year occur May 21, one day before the SAT score Mosley is so confident in gets posted on the College Board website. On that day – when current players have wrapped up the end of their semesters and Mosley’s future is more certain – the Terp faithful may be able to breathe easier.
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