Explaining the SEC Tournament changes

The SEC convened for its annual meeting earlier this week, and announced changes to the SEC Tournament, made necessary by the inclusion of two new teams in the conference. The changes to the SEC Tournament aren’t nearly as confusing as the changes to the regular season conference schedule, but they’re still worth taking a look at.

Gone is the 12-team format and divisional seeding of old. All 14 conference teams will play in the tournament, and each will received a seed from 1 to 14 based on regular season records. The tournament’s start date does move ahead one day to Wednesday, from the traditional Thursday launch. The 11 and 14 seeds, and the 12 and 13 seed will play on that first day. Those two new games are the primary change to the format. From that point, the tournament will more or less continue as it has in the past from Thursday to Sunday.

In essence, the top ten teams will receive first round byes, while the top four teams will receive first and second round byes, not playing until the quarter final round on Friday. This will affect the 11 and 12th seeded teams the most, as they’ll be playing an extra game than in the past.

The 2013 SEC Tournament will be held at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville Tennessee on March 13-17th, where hopefully Kentucky will be claiming yet another conference tournament championship.