updated 4:17 p.m. ET March 15, 2006

ORLANDO, Fla. - Women’s basketball teams chosen for the 2006 NCAA tournament continue to outscore male counterparts in college graduation rates, but the achievement gap is closing.

Sixty women’s schools playing in the postseason graduated at least 50 percent of their athletes, compared with 41 schools in the men’s tournament pool, according to a study released Wednesday by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

Only one women’s team graduated less than 40 percent, compared with 16 men’s teams.

“Women come from a culture where society has told them all these years that at whatever level you have to be better, you have to work harder, you have to outperform everyone else in order to break through all the gender barriers,” study author Richard Lapchick said. “In a basketball male culture, it’s almost not cool to study. I think it’s taken a lot of programs the NCAA has implemented to let those players and their coaches know, ’We’ve got to perform or we’re going to lose scholarship.”’

The study looked at 63 women’s teams and 64 men’s teams in the NCAA tournament — Dartmouth (women) and Penn (men) did not report its graduation rates.

Racial disparity in graduation rates exists among the teams, the study said.

Fifty schools in the women’s tournament graduated at least 70 percent of their white players, while 37 schools graduated that many black players. In men’s basketball, 38 tournament schools graduated 70 percent of their white athletes, while only 21 graduated that many black players.

Still, the gender achievement gap is decreasing. The male-female discrepancy at schools that graduated at least 70 percent of white players dropped since last year from 38 percent to 16 percent, and from 33 percent to 30 percent for black players, Lapchick said.

“Women’s teams have traditionally performed at levels a bit higher than men’s teams academically, so that’s not surprising,” NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said in an e-mail. “African-American student-athletes (male and female) are doing better academically than in the past, and they graduate at levels slightly higher than African-American college students in general, but there is still room for improvement. That’s why the NCAA’s academic reform efforts are so important.”

NCAA Division I men’s basketball ranks worst among all college sports for graduation rates. Seventy-six percent of white men’s players in the period studied graduated, while 49 percent of blacks did. In women’s basketball, white players graduated 88 percent of the time, compared with 71 percent for black players.

Lapchick said the success gap was alarming, but noted improvements in minority graduation rates under new NCAA academic reforms.

One women’s tournament school, Northern Arizona, didn’t graduate a single black player during the period studied, compared with two tourney-bound men’s schools (Nevada and Northern Iowa).

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The study examined four classes that entered between 1995-96 and 1998-99.

Nine women’s schools in the NCAA tournament graduated 100 percent of their athletes over the period studied: Baylor, Duke, Florida, Notre Dame, Purdue, Sacred Heart, Temple, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Florida also showed perfect graduation for men’s players, along with Bucknell, Illinois and Villanova.

Middle Tennessee State was the only women’s school to lose a scholarship for not meeting the NCAA’s new Academic Progress Rate standards. Two tournament-bound men’s schools — Hampton and Kent State — each lost two scholarships for low scores.

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