Given a choice, Georgia Tech basketball coach Paul Hewitt would like for his players to play less and study more.

He'd rather not start practice in mid-October nor play in early November.

He'd say these and other adjustments in his sport could help student-athletes improve their chances of earning degrees.

Hewitt, who is on the NCAA's basketball academic enhancement group, will have a chance to discuss those ideas Tuesday with his peers and administrators when the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics — an independent watchdog organization — meets in Washington, D.C.

Hewitt would like for basketball to be a one-semester sport so the academic disruption would be reduced, but acknowledges that the likelihood of the season beginning after the first semester is unrealistic.

"That's not going to happen," he said. "There are too many things involved. I could see maybe moving it a couple weeks."

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim and Arizona State's Herb Sendek are among others in the group with Hewitt. It is chaired by UCLA athletics director Dan Guerrero.

The most recent data assembled by the NCAA indicates that 63 percent of all Division I student-athletes who enrolled in 2000 graduated in six years or less compared with 62 percent of students overall (federal rate).

The federal rate does not count transfer students, but it is the only national measurement to compare overall student academic success with student-athletes'.

When the NCAA data is adjusted to include those who transfer and graduate, the rate improves to 77 percent.

Hewitt still sees need for improvement. Basketball's graduation rates lag behind other sports (61 percent in the adjusted rate to 66 percent for baseball, 67 for football, 68 for women's bowling, and 70 for wrestling).

Forty nine percent of African-American men in all sports who entered school in 2000 graduated within six years. That was 10 percent higher than the graduation rate of African-American men overall.

"The African-American graduation rate, to quote [sporting trends analyst] Richard Lapchick, is scandalous," said Hewitt. "If a basketball coach has a 36 percent graduation rate, we're screaming murder. My thing is let's take a big-picture look at this.

"We're trying to improve men's basketball, not that it's in total disrepair."

Hewitt said it's not just players who leave college after one season who are longshots to graduate. Even those who leave before finishing their fourth year sometimes are so many hours from a degree that they're discouraged from ever returning even if pro careers don't work out.

Hence, discussion about making summer school mandatory.

"We want to see if we can move kids as close to graduation as possible in three-and-a-half years," Hewitt said. "And we're studying transfers. There is a lower level of graduation with junior college transfers.

"Right now, you can't sign them until the fall of their sophomore years. One of the thoughts we're throwing around is allowing colleges to sign junior college players after their freshmen years and maybe even have them on your campuses for a couple [summer] classes before they go back for sophomore years."

The Knight Commission agenda also calls for discussion on the NCAA's Academic Performance Program, on trends in NCAA violations and recommendations to revise penalties for major rules violations.