BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — All 16 Southeastern Conference baseball teams will participate in the league’s annual post-season tournament in a single-elimination format starting with the 2025 baseball season, SEC announced Thursday.
The future tournament format was approved by the SEC athletics directors in preparation for the addition of Oklahoma and Texas to the conference beginning with the 2024-25 athletic year.
Under the existing format, the top 12 teams in the final 14-team regular season standings participate in a hybrid single/double elimination tournament over six days, according to SEC.
The existing format will be in effect for the 2024 SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, May 21-26.
SEC said the revised format will continue to be a six-day tournament with four games each on Tuesday and Wednesday of the tournament, two games each on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, followed by a championship game on Sunday.
Seeds 9 through 16, as determined by the final regular season standings, will play on the Tuesday of the tournament and seeds 5 through 8 will receive a bye to Wednesday. Seeds 1 through 4 will receive a double-bye to games on Thursday or Friday.
It was announced in 2023 that, upon expansion of the Conference in 2025, the SEC baseball regular season will continue to consist of 30 conference games for each team made up three-game series played over ten weekends.
Under the new scheduling format, each team will play two permanent opponents and eight rotating opponents on an annual basis and standings will be kept in a single-standings format with no divisions, according to a release.
