Haden on USC Athletics' academic integrity policy...
In light of recent events at institutions across the country, we have reviewed the safeguards that are in place to prevent such abuse within USC Athletics. USC takes academic integrity seriously and we believe we have established strong protocols, but no policy is perfect so we must remain constantly vigilant. Our protocols include banning coaches from communicating with faculty regarding student-athletes' academic progress and banning our academic staff from discussing with professors grades our student-athletes need to be eligible, as well as limiting the number of student-athletes in any one class and monitoring grade distributions when more than 15% of a class is composed of student-athletes. We also have our faculty athletic representative, who is a professor in our law school, contact any professor who makes a grade change for a student-athlete and verify the legitimacy of the change.
Click here for a story on the department's academic integrity policy.
Haden on women's soccer's primetime showdown Friday night at the Coliseum...Coach Keidane McAlpine (pictured) and his staff have done a tremendous job turning our soccer program around. We are a much better offensive team than we were a year ago. Here at the end, when we had crunch time, we had to win four of our last six and we have done that. It puts us in a position to make the NCAA Tournament, where we have not been since 2010. I give Steve Lopes and his search committee credit for hiring McAlpine.
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Haden on the UCLA rivalry for the SoCal BMW Crosstown Cup...
We play UCLA more than 30 times per year. Every one of them is important. It is the most important game for every one of our student-athletes. These are the moments the kids live for when you come to USC. I am sure they feel the same way at UCLA. For me as an old athlete, I live and die with those wins and losses. I died Sunday night when we lost to UCLA in men's water polo in a great atmosphere at the Uytengsu Aquatics Center. So, winning the SoCal BMW Crosstown Cup would be significant.
Click here for the SoCal BMW Crosstown Cup website.
Haden on the football season through nine games...
Given our severely diminished numbers, it is remarkable what we have been able to do with generally less than 50 players each game. It has been astounding. I think the staff has done a good job. I feel awful, as I know Coach Sarkisian does, about losing two games that we had an excellent chance of winning. But I am very optimistic about where we are heading. I think we are going to have a good recruiting class. We are going to have a lot of really good, young players next year.
Haden previews men's and women's basketball...
The men's team is clearly more athletic than last year and I fully anticipate that we will have a better season. They are young, but very athletic. I think they will be more entertaining to watch. I think we are certainly going in the right direction. On the women's side, we lost several key players, including Cassie Harberts, who was a really good player, so we have a little bit of rebuilding to do. The Pac-12 is tough this year on the women's side with several ranked teams, so we will have our work cut out for us, but Coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke also has her program moving in the right direction.
