Big Ten to invite 15 teams to conference hoops tournaments, will keep 20-game

The Big Ten, in trying to balance its ambitious expansion plans with the practicalities of competition, plans to restrict the number of teams in its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to 15 of its 18 members starting in 2025, a source briefed on the plans confirmed Friday.

While the shift adds a team to the tournament in raw terms, the end result is an unusual, though not unprecedented, move that will leave some teams out of the conference tournaments due to the sheer size of the Big Ten’s recent expansion.

Including all 18 teams would have required adding a sixth day of competition to the tournaments, something that officials ultimately found too unwieldy, the source said.

The Big Ten is planning to stay at a 20-game conference schedule when Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA join next year.

Jon Rothstein first reported the news.

Under the new format, the league will add 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 otherwise proceeding in its normal fashion, and the top four seeds earning a double bye until Friday.

This isn’t the first time a major conference has opted not to include all of its members in its tournament. From 2004 to 2008, as its membership grew to 16 teams, the Big East only included its top 12 finishers. But after coaches argued that being left out of the tournament hurt their job security and took away from the essence of college basketball, the conference reconsidered. Beginning in 2009, all 16 teams were invited to Madison Square Garden and the conference began on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. The top four teams received double byes.

Two years later, UConn memorably became the first team to win five games in five nights to capture the Big East Tournament title. The Huskies that year went on to win the national title.

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