SEC Men's Basketball Tournament
| SEC Men's Basketball Tournament | |
|---|---|
| Conference Basketball Championship | |
SEC logo
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| Sport | College basketball |
| Conference | Southeastern Conference |
| Number of teams | 14 |
| Format | Single-elimination tournament |
| Current stadium | Rotates (Bridgestone Arena in 2015) |
| Current location | Rotates (Nashville, Tennessee in 2015) |
| Played | 1933–34, 1936–1952, 1979–present |
| Last contest | 2016 |
| Current champion | Kentucky Wildcats |
| Most championships | Kentucky Wildcats (29) |
| TV partner(s) | ESPN/SEC Network |
| Official website | SECSports.com Men's Basketball |
The SEC Men's Basketball Tournament is the conference tournament in basketball for the Southeastern Conference (SEC). It is a single-elimination tournament that involves all league schools (currently 14). Its seeding is based on regular season records. The winner receives the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament, however the official conference championship is awarded to the team or teams with the best regular season record.
With the abandonment of divisions in SEC men's basketball starting in 2011–12, the top four teams in the conference standings received first-round byes. Bracketing was identical to that of the SEC Women's Basketball Tournament—note that SEC women's basketball has long been organized in a single league table without divisions.
Since the SEC expanded to 14 schools with the arrival of Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012, the 2013 tournament was the first with a new format. Both men's and women's tournaments have the four bottom seeds (#11 throughout #14) playing opening-round games, with the top four seeds receiving a "double-bye" into the quarterfinals.
Before 2012, the top two teams in both the Eastern and Western Divisions received byes in the first round, while #3 in the East played #6 from the West, #4 played #5, etc. The brackets were set up so that #2 would play the winner of the game involving #3 from the other division, and #1 would play the winner of the game involving #4 from the other division. Barring an upset, the semi-finals would pit #1 from one division against #2 from the other division, and the championship game would feature the regular season winners of the two divisions, although this rarely happened in practice.
Throughout its history, the SEC Championship basketball game has been held at various sites, including the Georgia Dome, Louisiana Superdome, Bridgestone Arena, the BJCC Coliseum, the Pyramid, Rupp Arena, Louisville Gardens and (in an emergency relocation) Alexander Memorial Coliseum at Georgia Tech.
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