ATLANTA – The Southeast Missouri women's basketball program was recognized for its outstanding achievement in the classroom this past year.

The Redhawks earned a spot on the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's Academic Top-25. As a group, the Redhawks posted a 3.546 team grade-point average, tied with North Dakota for the fifth-best mark in NCAA Division I.

"This is a great honor for our program," Southeast head coach Ty Margenthaler said. "Our players earned this award with their dedication to being true student-athletes. I want to personally thank Sharon Burgard and all the hard working staff at the Success Center for helping us to achieve this. The turnaround the players and staff have made in two short years here is phenomenal and will only continue to grow from here."

Allyson Bradshaw, Olivia Hackmann, Dru Haertling, Brittany Harriel, Jordan Hunter, Connor King, Bailie Roberts, Courtney Shiffer, Brooke Taylor and Kara Wright all finished the year with a GPA above 3.0 during the 2012-13 academic year. That group comprises 11 of the 12 players on the team's active roster last season.

"The GPAs produced this year by each of the Top 25 teams are quite remarkable," said WBCA CEO Beth Bass. "The coaches of these teams have done a terrific job encouraging their student-athletes to perform at their best both on the court and in the classroom. Congratulations to these 114 programs. I wish them each continued success."

A team's GPA is calculated by dividing the total number of quality points earned by the total number of hours attempted by all team members in the academic terms (semesters or quarters) that the season spans. Weighted grades are converted to a 4.0 scale. The GPAs are rounded to the nearest thousandth of a point. Teams are nominated for the honor by a WBCA-member head coach. A team must have a 3.000 or better GPA to be nominated.

Utah Valley led all of Division I with a 3.639 cumulative grade-point average.

Here is the complete 2013 WBCA Academic Top 25 for NCAA Division I.

Rank	Institution	2012-13 Head Coach	Team GPA
1	Utah Valley University	Cathy Nixon	3.639
T2	DePaul University**	Douglas Bruno	3.625
T2	St. Francis College (N.Y.)	John Thurston	3.625
4	Florida Gulf Coast University	Karl Smesko	3.621
T5	Southeast Missouri State University	Ty Margenthaler	3.546
T5	University of North Dakota	Travis Brewster	3.546
7	University of Northern Iowa	Tanya Warren	3.541
8	University of Denver	Kerry Cremeans	3.519
9	Brown University	Jean Marie Burr	3.518
10	North Dakota State University	Carolyn DeHoff	3.512
11	Oakland University	Beckie Francis*	3.503
12	Lehigh University	Susan Troyan	3.498
13	South Dakota State University**	Aaron Johnston	3.492
T14	Eastern Washington University	Wendy Schuller	3.491
T14	Western Carolina University	Karen Middleton	3.491
16	Cornell University	Dayna Smith	3.453
17	Youngstown State University	Bob Boldon*	3.438
18	Austin Peay State University	Carrie Daniels	3.437
19	University of Evansville	Oties Epps	3.411
20	Alcorn State University	Tonya Edwards	3.404
21	Harvard University	Kathy Delaney-Smith	3.399
22	Yale University	Chris Gobrecht	3.385
23	University of New Mexico	Yvonne Sanchez	3.372
24	University of South Dakota	Amy Williams	3.368
25	University of Northern Colorado	Jamie White	3.365