McMurphy: C-USA Reducing Basketball Tournament to 8 Teams

Stadium's college football insider Brett McMurphy tweeted tonight that Conference USA will be changing the format of their men's and women's basketball tournaments. Specifically, the league will reduce the number of teams competing in their postseason tournament from 12 to 8.

C-USA consists of 14 schools and all but two of them had qualified for their conference tournament. The new policy means that 6 teams will stay home and not have an opportunity to play for an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. This also could have an impact on UTEP. Last season, the men's basketball team finished 11th out of 14 teams and the Miners would not have qualified for Frisco if the new rules had already been in place. The UTEP women were the 7th seed after the regular season so they would have qualified for the postseason tournament. Now, C-USA will begin play with the quarterfinals and no team will have to play more than three games in three days in order to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

McMurphy also reported that C-USA will make changes to their Olympic sports, although no specifics were mentioned outside of a reduction of regular season games or changes to the postseason format. Although rumors started to swirl that C-USA and the Sun Belt could potentially join forces to enhance regional matchups, Louisiana Tech Athletic Director Tommy McClelland said that no conversation has taken place nor does he expect that to happen.