The Sun Belt Conference announced changes to its men’s and women’s basketball tournament brackets on Thursday, which will go into effect for the 2024-25 season.
While the league will continue to take all 14 members to the Sun Belt Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships and will maintain its seven-day tournament format, rest days will be eliminated from the postseason events.
- To prioritize the value of the 18-game conference regular season, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds will now receive byes to the tournament semifinals. The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will maintain byes to the tournament quarterfinals, previously given to the top four seeds.
With the elimination of rest days, higher-seeded teams will no longer face a lower-seeded team coming off a rest day.
“The new Sun Belt Basketball Championship brackets will reward our top seeds for their accomplishments during the regular season, ensuring they receive the advantage they’ve earned for their on-court performance,” said Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Keith Gill.
Women’s basketball tournament games will be contested during the morning sessions each day, with games tipping off primarily at 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Men’s basketball tournament games will be played during the evening sessions, with games scheduled primarily at 5:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
PENSACOLA CONNECTION: The conference recently announced a five-year extension that will keep the Sun Belt Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships in Pensacola, Fla., through 2030. The landmark extension will make Pensacola, the longest-tenured (2021-2030) and most-frequent (10-time) host of the Sun Belt Basketball Championships all-time—surpassing the city of New Orleans, La., which has hosted the championships on eight occasions, including seven-straight years from 2014-2020.
The 2025 Sun Belt Basketball Championships will take place from March 4-10, 2025, with all tournament games being played at the Pensacola Bay Center. All tournament games will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN+, with the women’s championship game airing on ESPNU and the men’s championship game airing on ESPN2.
- The James Madison men and Marshall women enter the 2024-25 season as the reigning tournament champions, after cutting down the nets in Pensacola following their first-ever Sun Belt Conference titles in 2024.
Ticket packages and single-game tickets for this year’s championships will go on sale today at 10 a.m.
Photo by Kylie Osullivan on Unsplash