OXON HILL, Md. — The April meat markets won't be making a comeback.

The NCAA on Friday kept intact a new rule that bars men's basketball coaches from attending nonscholastic tournaments in April, a blow for the hundreds of unregulated events that high school players have used as auditions for college.

The rule was passed last year, but a groundswell of schools attempted to override the legislation Friday during a meeting of the Division I Legislative Forum at the NCAA Convention. They were met with blistering resistance from those who felt it was time the organization took a stand in favor of books over basketballs.

"If we override this piece of legislation, what we will be saying to our prospective student-athletes is that, to a certain extent, academics don't matter," Georgia athletic director Damon Evans told the audience. "If we are truly about academics — as we state so eloquently all the time — then we will vote against this."

Evans and others said the tournaments take high school students away from studies for days at a time during a critical part of the academic year. They said coaches have other means to evaluate the high schoolers, notably at tournaments held when school is not in session during the summer.

"If we don't send a message, you might as well take the 'student' out of 'student-athlete' and call it what it really is," Army athletic director Kevin Anderson said.

Face with such strong sentiment, not a single person who was in favor of nixing the rule stood during the discussion period to make a case — even though the NCAA had received 62 requests supporting the override. The final vote was 55 percent to 45 percent in favor of keeping the April ban, with those wanting it repealed falling far short of their needed 62.5 percent.

Some who liked the April tournaments said they were money-savers for colleges. It cost less to go to one tournament to see many prospects than it does to fly around and meet them one at a time.

The National Association of Basketball Coaches said its membership favored the ban in a poll last fall. The deteriorating economy might have changed some minds, but not enough to toss the rule out.

"It's a balancing act," said St. Peter's College athletic director Pat Elliott, who voted to repeal the rule. "Certainly academic integrity is our main priority, but at the same time we all have constraints financially."