Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech freshman Darrion Pellum dunks the ball during a basketball drill.

Darrion Pellum will never play basketball for Virginia Tech.

The freshman guard did not meet NCAA eligibility standards and will transfer to a junior college after the fall semester, Hampton High School coach Walter Brower said Wednesday.

Pellum, who played for Brower before transferring to Massanutten Military Academy in 2005, has been taking classes at Tech this semester.

He practiced with the Hokies before their Labor Day weekend exhibitions in Canada but was one of two freshmen who did not make the trip because the NCAA had not yet ruled them eligible.

Brower said that after Pellum took the SAT twice, the NCAA found fault with "too many erasure marks on his answer sheet," wanted documentation from Massanutten that no one took the test for him, and wouldn't accept his scores. He had to take the SAT again this month, said Brower.

"They gave him three days [to retake it] and he didn't score high enough based on his GPA," Brower said. "I feel so bad because the kid worked his hind parts off."

Brower said Pellum was ruled a nonqualifier under the NCAA's sliding scale for freshman eligibility. Under the scale, an athlete's SAT score can be as low as 400 if his grade-point average is 3.55; the GPA can be as low as 2.0 if the SAT score is 1,010.

The ACC doesn't allow its schools to admit freshman athletes who are nonqualifiers.

Some nonqualifiers can eventually transfer to ACC schools, but Pellum can't because he had already enrolled at Tech. Pellum can never play for any ACC school.

Pellum also can't be on scholarship at Tech because of his nonqualifier status. Brower said Pellum is applying for student loans to pay for this semester.

Pellum hasn't yet picked a junior college.

"If [the NCAA ruling] had happened in the summertime, we could've ... found a Division I school," Brower said.

After transferring to Massanutten to improve his academic resume, Pellum repeated his junior year in 2005-06. He played for Massanutten's postgraduate team that season and as a fifth-year senior.

He began Tech's pre-Canada practices last month as one of three contenders for the starting point guard job.

Tech is still hoping another member of coach Seth Greenberg's six-man freshman class, J.T Thompson, will be ruled eligible by the NCAA. A seventh freshman, Dorenzo Hudson, hopes to enroll at Tech after the fall semester. Hudson didn't finish his high-school coursework in time to be admitted for this semester.

In the summer of 2006, Tech signee Tyrone Appleton was not admitted to Tech because he didn't meet NCAA eligibility standards. Another signee that year, Jeff Allen, didn't have the academic credentials to attend Tech in 2006-07 and spent last year at Hargrave Military Academy.

Allen is a freshman on this year's Tech team.