Note: This story is being updated with information in a release now posted on the Syracuse University website.

Syracuse, N.Y. — The NCAA has notified Syracuse University officials that the men's basketball program can begin serving its scholarship penalties this year, according to a university official.

In addition, the NCAA informed Syracuse that because the men's basketball program is currently three under the NCAA's normal scholarship limit that the school can apply all three of those scholarships toward the penalty.

The NCAA had originally sanctioned Syracuse with the loss of three scholarships a year for a four-year period. That penalty was part of the NCAA's report on violations within the Syracuse basketball program. The report was released last March.

Syracuse officials appealed the NCAA's sanctions.

In October, while the appeal was pending, SU voluntarily forfeited three scholarships for the current 2015-16 season.

In December, the NCAA reduced the scholarship penalty, docking Syracuse just two scholarships a year for the next four years.

Syracuse also petitioned the NCAA's Committee on Infractions to count the three scholarships that Syracuse had given up for this year against the scholarship penalty.

According to a Syracuse University release, SU chancellor Kent Syverud, in a Dec. 23 letter, requested that the Committee on Infractions count these three scholarships against the eight scholarship penalty.

The release states that Syverud noted that the "University has taken the recent major infractions case and resulting penalties very seriously" and "that applying the scholarship reductions as we have proposed will hold Syracuse University fully accountable for the violations that occurred without causing undue harm to student-athletes by withholding a scholarship unnecessarily."

The chair of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, Greg Sankey, notified the University last week that the NCAA will apply these three scholarships to the eight scholarship penalty.

As a result, Syracuse will lose only five scholarships after the current season.

Those five scholarships must be taken as two in the 2016-17 academic year, two in the 2017-18 academic year and one in the 2018-19 academic year.

The NCAA allows schools to have 13 student-athletes on scholarship for men's basketball. That puts Syracuse three scholarships under the NCAA's limit this year.

Syracuse will lose two seniors off this year's team: Michael Gbinije and Trevor Cooney.

To this point, Syracuse has signed letters of intent from two players in the 2016 recruiting class: Matthew Moyer and Tyus Battle.

That would leave Syracuse with 10 scholarship players for next season. However, Syracuse continues to recruit Taurean Thompson, a 6-10 forward at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H.

Syracuse will be able to offer Thompson a scholarship without having to worry about one becoming available due a current player leaving early for the NBA or transferring to another school.