Temple freshman Michael Eric has been declared academically ineligible to play basketball by the NCAA Clearinghouse, school officials said yesterday.
Eric, a 6-foot-10 native of Nigeria who had been expected to provide frontcourt depth this season, had spent the last two seasons at the Church Farm School in Exton and another year at a school in Delaware. One Temple official said Eric's high school transcript from those years and his standardized test scores were well above the standards needed to qualify under NCAA rules. But his "academic portfolio in Nigeria," as the Temple official put it, apparently caused the hang-up.
