We’re only about one full month into college basketball’s offseason, and it’s already been pretty eventful. We’ve gotten coach firings, firings, transfers, and now a postseason ban for a former Michigan State assistant coach.
Mark Montgomery and Detroit Mercy nearly snuck into the NCAA Tournament this past season, but the up-and-coming program is going to face a one-year postseason ban.
According to Tony Paul of The Detroit News, Montgomery and Detroit Mercy won’t be eligible for postseason play after the 2026-27 regular season because they fell short of the required APR.
What is APR? It stands for Academic Progress Rate which measures a program’s academic success during a four-year window. The score to aim for is 930 and anything below that is subject to NCAA penalties that can apparently include a postseason ban. It’s kind of wild what other programs seem to get away with, but when it comes to a small Horizon League school that doesn’t exactly move the needle on a national level, they get a postseason ban.
Not incredibly fair, especially since it’s already so difficult to recruit at smaller schools like that in the NIL and transfer portal era. Motivating a roster with a postseason ban in place cannot be easy.
Detroit Mercy reportedly isn’t putting the blame on Montgomery since he just took over two years ago. This is obviously something that he’s going to need to be cognizant of moving forward because if your name isn’t Duke or Kentucky or even Michigan, you’re going to get more than just a slap on the wrist for something as small as this when there are harsher violations being committed.
Kind of a wild move by the NCAA, but I can’t say that I’m surprised.
Mark Montgomery has begun the turnaround
In 2023-24, Detroit Mercy won just one single game. In 2024-25 when Montgomery took over, Mercy won eight games, In 2025-26, the Titans won 17 games and had a winning record in league play as well as overall, and nearly suck into the NCAA Tournament — they lost in the Horizon League title game by three.
What Montgomery has been able to do in a short period of time at a program that looked like it was dead in the water is nothing short of a miracle.
Tom Izzo often gets knocked for his coaching tree not being as extensive as some of his fellow college basketball legends, but Montgomery is turning out to be a really good one. Detroit is committed to him despite this violation and I’m sure he’ll find a way to use this as fuel for a run in 2027-28.
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