Eric Manuel

Eric Manuel (born December 21, 1968) is an American former college basketball player.

Born in Macon, Georgia; Manuel made the Parade and McDonald's All-America teams as a high school senior in 1987. The 6-foot-6-inch (1.98 m) small forward/shooting guard signed with the Kentucky Wildcats, and broke into the starting lineup by the middle of his freshman year. He was named to the all-Southeastern Conference freshman team.

Just before the start of his sophomore season, however, questions surfaced about his college admissions exams. Manuel had fallen short of a qualifying score on his previous attempts to take the SAT and ACT. When he took the ACT at Lafayette High School in Lexington—home to UK—he finally got a passing score. In July 1989, as part of a larger probe into the Wildcat program, the NCAA investigated Manuel's test scores after finding out he had made a dramatic nine-point improvement when he took his last ACT. When Manuel took the ACT at Lafayette High, 211 of a possible 219 answers were the same as those of another student, Chris Shearer. To the NCAA, this suggested that Manuel had cheated. Indeed, according to ACT officials, there was only a two-in-a-million chance that two students' answers could have resembled each other so closely without cheating.

Manuel adamantly denied any wrongdoing, but voluntarily stayed out of the lineup while the investigation progressed so as not to risk Kentucky being forced to forfeit any games if he were declared ineligible. As it turned out, the investigation dragged through the entire 1988-89 season.

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