Jen Tuscano has set up study halls in airports. She's proctored exams in hotel lobbies. And as an academic coordinator in Pitt's athletic department, she spent Monday night calling professors to let them know that the Pitt women's basketball players would be out of class Thursday and Friday of this week, and possibly for all of next week, too.

During the NCAA Tournament, it isn't easy to balance books amid the glamour of the buzzer beaters and the bracket busters. Keeping up with schoolwork during March Madness can require a logistical operation as highly choreographed as a backdoor screen play.

"Basketball is a tremendously disruptive sport for a student athlete," said Rob Ruck, a senior lecturer in Pitt's history department who has about 10 male and female basketball players in his U.S. history survey class this semester.

"They're not only going on frequent road trips and practicing for hours a day, but once the tournaments hit, they're gone."

Ms. Tuscano travels with the women's basketball team when they go on the road, trying to squeeze in a daily study hall in the hotel conference room or banquet hall after the team eats dinner. During the season, she's even scheduled study halls on game days, between the shootaround and the tip-off.

An academic adviser is also travelling with Pitt's men basketball team, and one travels with the football team during the fall semester.

Depending how far the teams advance in this year's NCAA Tournament, the Pitt women's team might actually end up missing more class than the men's team.

If the men's team advances to the south regionals in Houston, they plan to come back to campus this weekend. If the women's team wins its first two games, however, they will go straight from Albuquerque to Spokane, Wash., where they'll play the next Saturday.

If that scenario happens, Ms. Tuscano will set up study halls around flights and daily practices. She travels with a laptop to enable students who don't have their own computers to write and e-mail assignments on the road.

When the teams return to campus, it could be a while before they're really back in the groove academically.

"When the tournament is over, they're going to face a really tough set of obstacles," said Dr. Ruck, who has taught at Pitt on and off since the mid-1970s. "They're going to be behind, and be emotionally and physically exhausted. It's probably triage at that point."

All that said, some of his best students have been athletes, said Dr. Ruck, citing former men's basketball players Brandon Knight and Orlando Antigua. Just this week, he said, freshman women's basketball player Shayla Scott e-mailed an assignment days before it was due because she knew she'd be out of town.

He tries to accommodate athletes the same way that he'd treat a student who had to miss class because of an illness or a job interview, he said.

"What can you do but be flexible?" he said. "My attitude is that if the university wants them to do this, and has given them the scholarship to do this, then when the tournament's over I'll help them get back in the groove."

In the past, he's even conducted make up classes for athletes, he said.

For her part, Ms. Tuscano tries to make sure that athletes don't schedule classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, which are commonly spent playing games or traveling. Professors get letters at the beginning of the semester with the dates that athletes will miss for games, and Ms. Tuscano encourages athletes to touch base with the professors before every class that they will miss.

Still, at Pitt, the NCAA Tournament happens to fall right in the middle of the semester.

At Ohio State, which runs on the quarter system, the men's basketball team didn't miss many classes last year even though they made it all the way to the title game, said Dan Wallenberg, assistant athletic director for communications.

The first two week of the tournament fell right after finals finished and during spring break, he said, and classes were just getting started during the third week.

"For us, for tournament time, that's really kind of our off time," he said.

Students at Pitt aren't so lucky, with the last day of classes for the spring semester falling April 14, just a week after the men's national championship game.

The situation is far from ideal, said Dr. Ruck, but both students and professors have to deal with the hand they've been dealt.

"There are some real contradictions between college athletics and college education," he said. "The university asks an awful lot out of these young people."