Big West Conference Adopts New Basketball Tournament Format

Big West Conference Adopts New Basketball Tournament Format

The new format is designed to reward regular season performances

The Big West Conference announced the approval of a format change for its men's and women's postseason basketball tournament beginning with the 2003-04 season. Action on the format change was taken at the annual Big West Board of Directors meeting in Los Angeles, Calif.

Eight men's and women's teams will continue to advance to the tournament at the Anaheim Convention Center, March 10-13. However, Wednesday's first round games will include only teams seeded Nos. 5 to 8. Winners on Wednesday will advance to play teams seeded Nos. 3 and 4 on Thursday. Thursday's winners will meet teams seeded Nos. 1 and 2 in the semifinals on Friday. In each round the highest seeded team playing that day will play the lowest remaining seeded team. Once again, the men's and women's tournament championship games will be on Saturday.

"The Big West basketball tournament format has been under review by the conference membership for the past 14 months," said Commissioner Dennis Farrell. "This format change is the result of input from Big West men's and women's coaches, faculty athletics representatives, directors of athletics, senior woman administrators, marketing directors and sports information directors.

"This new format is designed to reward regular season performances and create even greater incentives as teams compete for positioning in the final regular season standings," continued Farrell.

Utah State won the Big West tournament championship in 2003 after finishing in third-place in the league during the regular season. Overall, USU has won three of the last four tournament championships, but Aggies head coach Stew Morrill is supportive of the new format.

"The format we've had in the Big West Conference has been very favorable to our program the last few years," said Morrill. "However, I have always said any plan that better rewards your performance in the regular season is something I would be in favor of.

"The new format, in theory, gives teams who had the best conference record a better chance of advancing to the NCAA Tournament," continued Morrill.

The Big West basketball tournament began in 1976 and is the longest running postseason conference basketball event in the West.