We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the Arkansas basketball program and its APR shortcomings this year.

It deserves to be talked about. It’s a major sport. And it looks like there is some big trouble brewing.

But let’s take a break and assess the rest of the Arkansas’ APR landscape. Eighteen of Arkansas’ 19 sports earned scores above the 925 cutline. That’s an impressive achievement. Even more impressive, 16 of the 19 teams maintained or improved their scores from last year’s four-year snapshot. And even more impressive than that, 12 of 19 teams scored above 959.

Two of the biggest improvements were pointed out in Arkansas’ release earlier today:

• Baseball went from 914 to 945

• Men’s golf went from 904 to 945

Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long said he was pretty happy with the entire program and how it performed. He said Arkansas holds a higher standard than the NCAA. If a team scores under 935, they examine it, see what has happened and does everything possible to improve. You can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to be messing around close to the 925 mark.

In those terms, Arkansas will evaluate football (927) and women’s tennis (932). Long was asked about the football program’s score on the teleconference earlier today and had this to say:

“Football, it’s OK,” Long said. “We’re going to work to do better there. It’s beneath that 935 level that we kind of set as an area where we’re going to work even harder and present plans to help our student-athletes achieve at a higher rate. But I’m satisfied because we did go through a coaching change and that does impact your numbers. But we’ve got to stay on top of it. I know Coach Petrino and his staff are on top of it. I think we’ll see improvement as the years go on.”

I’ll close this blog with something Arkansas fans won’t like to see regarding both football and basketball.

Brett McMurphy of the Tampa Tribune has done a little research (at least, I think it was him) and has found the bottom 10 football and basketball scores among BCS conference schools. The school he covers, South Florida, falls in that category in both sports. But guess what? So does Arkansas.

According to McMurphy’s blog, Arkansas is sixth-worst in football (but still above the 925 cutline I might add) among BCS conference schools. The basketball team is fourth worst. So there you go.