Minium: New Sun Belt Tournament Basketball Brackets Will Create Challenges for ODU Men, Women
The new bracket rewards teams for their regular-season records. The top two teams receives byes into the semifinals while the bottom four teams must win seven games in seven days.
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – S.B. Nation describes the new Sun Belt Conference Basketball Tournament bracket as “a Royal Rumble.”
Scrum might be more like it.
If you're among the bottom four teams when the tournament begins March 4 in Pensacola, Florida, you must win seven games in seven days to claim the Sun Belt title.
Meanwile, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in both the men’s and women’s Sun Belt tournaments will receive byes until the semifinals.
Win two games and you’re in the Big Dance.
"The 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," Sun Belt Commissioner Keith Gill said when the brackets were announced.
And while that's also true in other conferences, in which top seeds often get a bye into the quarterfinals, but very few tournaments provide the kind of advantage to the top seeds as does the Sun Belt.
The No. 9 and No. 10 seeds begin play on March 5 and must win six games. Numbers eight and nine enter the fray a night later and must win five games and so it goes until the semifinals on March 9, when the top two seeds finally enter the fray.
Mike Jones, ODU’s head men’s basketball coach, said he understands the reasoning behind the format, that you might have a 16-0 team that has a bad night in the tournament, doesn’t get an automatic bid and misses out on an at-large bid.
And that lessens your conference’s chances of notching an NCAA Tournament victory or two.
Winning a game or two generates millions of dollars in NCAA Tournament revenue for your conference. Last year, five teams that did not have winning records won conference tournaments and earned NCAA bids.
The ODU men (11-18 overall, 7-9 Sun Belt) are ninth in the league and if things remain the same, they would have to win six games. They close out the regular season tonight at Marshall (17-12, 10-6) and Friday at Coastal Carolina (9-20, 2-14).
Conceivably, the Monarchs could finish seventh, which would mean having to win five games in five days. They could also drop as low as 11th, meaning having to win seven games.
The outlook is a bit more optimistic for the ODU women (16-13, 8-8 ) who are sixth and could finish as high as fifth. Assuming they don’t fall to seventh, the Monarchs would begin play on March 7 and would have to win four games in four days.
The women close out the regular season Wednesday at Coastal Carolina and Friday at Georgia Southern.
Coastal (21-6, 11-5) defeated ODU earlier this season while Georgia Southern (12-17, 4-12) lost at ODU by two this past weekend on a late three-point shot from Simaru Fields.
The ODU women ended a six-game losing streak by upsetting second-place Arkansas State last Thursday, two nights before beating Georgia Southern.
ODU Women’s Basketball Head Coach DeLisha Milton-Jones said she hasn’t kept up each day with where her team is in the standings.
“You focus on what you have control over,” she said. “And in this moment, it is Coastal Carolina, who beat us at our place.
“We need to beat them This game has a lot of implications for us.”
Meanwhile, Jones and the men’s team have monitored the bracketology from the get-go.
“We’ve got the tournament bracket drawn up in our film room,” forward Dani Pounds said. “We look at our ranking every day so that we make sure we know what we have to do.”
Mike Jones said his team needs to finish strong this week.
“Nothing is going to be easy in the tournament, I can promise you that,” he said. “I don’t care where you finish.
“But if we finish like we should, it gives you an easier time, another day of rest, and the right mentality going into the tournament.
“The Sun Belt Tournament is what we’ve been pointing for all season. That’s why these last two games are so important. We need to be in the best position possible.”
Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram