Five members of the women's team and three members of the men's basketball team are among those who achieved grade-point averages of at least 3.0 during the fall semester.

Stefanie Dolson, Caroline Doty, Heather Buck, Kiah Stokes and Kelly Faris will join the other student athletes in a ceremony at halftime of Saturday's women's basketball game against Georgetown. Junior Alex Oriakhi and senior walk-ons Kyle Bailey and Ben Stewart will not be at the ceremony because they have a road game at Syracuse.

Interestingly enough, the ceremony will be held a day after the NCAA turned down Connecticut's request for a waiver that would allow the men's basketball team to play in the 2013 national championship tournament. UConn doesn't qualify for the tournament because of below-standard academic results.

University President Susan Herbst said she's disappointed by the decision of NCAA staff to reject that proposal, but said the school will appeal.

"I want to be clear that during my entire career as a scholar and a teacher, I have been in full support of high academic standards in collegiate athletics," she said. "However, in this case, there are good students who could be penalized for the problematic behavior of students who have not been enrolled for years. Educators and parents need to do what is right for their students, and not allow them to be caught in the dynamics of public relations."

Meanwhile, the women have quietly excelled in the classroom.

The men's basketball team scored an 893 last year on the NCAA academic progress report, which measures academic achievement. The APR measures classroom performance of student-athletes on every Division I team. Teams scoring below the 925 cutline in one year can face immediate penalties. Those scoring below 900 or with low scores for several years face tougher historical sanctions.

Jim Calhoun's team lost two scholarships this season as a result of their low APR. But the school has said the scores are improving.

But the women's team had a four-year academic progress rate of 990, well above the national average for all athletes of 970. Their one-year score for 2010-11 was a perfect 1,000.

"That's something that our team takes great pride in," coach Geno Auriemma said. "We set up competitions on our team among the team itself. We break the team up into three groups and each of the assistant coaches gets a team ...and they are constantly checking on each other's GPAs."

Faris said it's part of her team's competitive nature.

"Any competition with us is a challenge, and we constantly try for it," Faris said. "Whether it's at Ping-Pong or school, there's always going to be a challenge, and we're always going to make a game out of it."

On Thursday, Dolson was fuming because her academic team had come in second place to a team led by guard Caroline Doty.

"It's not fair because Heather (Buck) had a grade that didn't come in yet that would have been an `A,' and we only lost by point-1 or point-oh-1, so that definitely would have put us in first place," she said. "So, I think we won."

Auriemma said that he hasn't found a correlation between book smarts and basketball smarts, but when he is recruiting, he does look for kids who put forth a great effort in the classroom.

"It's more about if you work hard and you are conscientious, and it's important to you and you take great pride in what your grades are," he said, "then I think you have a chance to be a really good basketball player."