SEC announces format change to baseball tournament

The SEC has altered the format of its annual baseball tournament, Commissioner Mike Slive announced today, the first major change to the event’s schedule since 1996. The 2012 SEC Baseball Tournament, which will be held in Hoover, Ala., at Regions Park for the 15th consecutive year, will increase to 10 teams and will begin on Tuesday, May 22. The tournament will continue to follow a format that is modeled in a fashion similar to previous SEC Tournament and College World Series brackets. The 10 teams are seeded 1-10 with the two divisional champions guaranteed the top two seeds and first-round byes. Games played from Tuesday through Friday are double elimination, with single elimination starting on Saturday. The tournament field will include the top teams from the SEC’s Eastern and Western Divisions plus eight at-large bids seeded 3-10 based on conference winning percentage. The SEC has also announced the beginning of a Baseball Legends Program, modeled after the popular Legend and Greats programs that surround the SEC Football Championship Game and the SEC Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments. Four former SEC baseball standouts will be honored on-site as part of the annual baseball tournament each year, beginning in May 2012.