DETROIT (WXYZ) — The Detroit Mercy men's basketball team will face sanctions for the 2026-27 season, including a postseason ban, athletic director Robert Vowels announced to fans in a statement on Monday.
This comes after Detroit Mercy lost to Wright State, 66-63, in the Horizon League Tournament Final, missing out on an automatic bid to the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
The NCAA is set to release its Academic Progress Rate on Wednesday, and Detroit Mercy said before that announcement that the program did not meet the required 930 APR standard set by the NCAA.
"The APR continues to be a meaningful measure of the overall academic health of our athletics programs, and we support its role in promoting accountability and student success," Vowels said in the statement. "However, with the current APR formula, many in college athletics believe that there is an overreliance on narrow, potentially biased measures that can perpetuate inequities and may undermine the broader educational mission. As the NCAA continues to modernize its bylaws and rules, we are hopeful the APR model will evolve as well to better reflect the on-campus, real-life dynamics faced by institutions, student-athletes, and coaches."
Vowels said that the program has a "new academic improvement plan in place to address the evolving NCAA era."
Head coach Mark Montgomery is staying with the team, and the statement said that his staff has been "fully invested in academic monitoring and success since their arrival last year."
Six student-athletes on last season's squad plan to return to Detroit Mercy, Vowels said.
