Armstrong forfeits 17 games

The Armstrong Atlantic State women's basketball team will have to forfeit its 17 wins this season and will be barred from participating in next week's Peach Belt Conference Tournament for using an ineligible player, conference commissioner Marvin Vanover announced Monday.

Vanover said junior forward Audosha Kelley should have been ineligible to play for the Pirates when she transferred from Middle Tennessee State.

Even if all the correct information had been provided by the school, Vanover said, Kelley would have still been ineligible.

"If (AASU) had filed it, they would have realized she was ineligible, too," he said. "There was nothing to indicate that the student-athlete lied. The mistakes were made by Armstrong personnel."

The forfeitures will change the team's record from 17-11, 7-7 to 0-14, 0-28.

The decision helps Augusta State, which dropped a 55-51 decision in Savannah on Jan. 8. Augusta State is now 13-12 overall and 7-7 in the North division, a game out of first place.

USC Aiken, which already defeated the Lady Pirates, is unaffected by the change.

Kelley was the PBC's leading scorer with 18.2 points a game.

With the exclusion of AASU from the tournament, Vanover said the top three teams in each division will get first-round byes instead of the top two.