In the late 1990s, Tennessee men's basketball enjoyed some of the best recruiting in the program's history and it paid off on the court.

The classroom, however, was another story.

The NCAA on Wednesday released its Graduation Success Rate Report for freshmen entering school during a fouryear period, 1996-99, who graduated within six years.

UT's 18 percent graduation success rate for those four years of recruits is one of the worst in the nation among major schools.

UT football's 58 percent rate fell in the middle of both the SEC and this week's top-25 rankings.

The Lady Vols' basketball program was one of three SEC programs to report 100 percent success.

The GSR is not to be confused with the federal graduation rate that will be released in October.

This is the second year the NCAA has released its alternate report, one it feels is more accurate because it takes into account two categories the federal one does not.

The federal report does not credit institutions for players who leave in good academic standing or for transfers into the school who graduate. Thus, the federal numbers are almost always lower. Tennessee's men's basketball measured only 8 percent on the federal formula.

Wednesday's report covered the four years in which UT recruited most of the players who helped the Vols reach four consecutive NCAA tournaments from 1998 through 2001.

The first class included C.J. Black, Charles Hathaway, Isiah Victor and Vegas Davis. Other recruits in the report were Tony Harris, Del Baker, Vincent Yarbrough, (transfer) Jenis Grindstaff, Marcus Haislip, Ron Slay, Jon Higgins, Harris Walker and Terrence Woods.

In the SEC, only Georgia's 9 percent was worse than Tennessee's.

UT's Eric Brey, director of the Thornton Academics Student Life Center, said some athletes are more inclined than others to take advantage of academic opportunities.

"We've always wanted to graduate our student/athletes,'' Brey said, "but since we've had facilities like the Thornton Center we've really focused on improving those numbers.

"As the years go along, I think you'll see the percentages increase.''

Nationally, the overall GSR for all men's and women's sports was 77 percent, up from 76 percent in the initial report last year.

Men's basketball was the lowest-ranking sport nationally at 59 percent. Football and baseball were both 65 percent. UT's baseball GSR was 60 percent.

The Lady Vols had a 100 percent rate in four sports and none lower than soccer at 84 percent.

Florida men's basketball had a 100 percent report and the Gators scored 80 percent in football.

Notre Dame was among the national leaders in football at 95 percent, followed by Nebraska's 88 percent.