Change is coming to Big Ten basketball.
The Big Ten announced Tuesday that the conference’s basketball tournaments — both men’s and women’s — will only include 15 of its 18 members starting in 2025.
With Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington joining next season, the league opted to alter its format and restrict the number of teams due to the size of its recent expansion.
The Big Ten currently has 14 teams and all are invited to the postseason tournament, with the winner securing an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. That kept hope alive for even the last-place team to make it to the Big Dance.
That won’t be the case moving forward. Beginning next season, the bottom three in the standings will be left out.
Under the new format, the tournament will remain a five-day event, with the top four seeds receiving a double bye until Friday and the No. 5-9 seeds receiving a single bye to Thursday.
The league will add a team and a game to the Wednesday slate, with the 10th-place finisher playing the 15th-place finisher. The winner of that game faces the No. 7 seed on Thursday, with the tournament proceeding from there in normal fashion.
The Big Ten also announced that its regular-season conference schedules will remain at 20 games for the men and 18 for the women.
“This allows for non-conference scheduling flexibility, is consistent with peer schedule formats and maximizes opportunities for NCAA postseason berths,” the Big Ten said in a release. “Single-play home/away locations will rotate annually, and two-play opponents will be determined with consideration for competitive balance, geography and rivalries.”
This season, for the first time, both the men’s and women’s Big Ten tournaments will be held at Target Center in Minneapolis.
