Hoops tourneys hot topic at SoCon meetings

The format for future Southern Conference basketball tournaments will be decided this week in Hilton Head, S.C.

Among the many items on the agenda for the SoCon spring meetings, which begin today, none is bigger than the basketball tournaments. The sites for the 2010 and 2011 tournaments are decided — they will be in Charlotte, N.C., next year and back at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2011 — but how they will be conducted and how many teams will participate will be debated.

“We’re going to spend some time with coaches and administrators talking about this,” SoCon commissioner John Iamarino said Monday.

The 2009 men’s and women’s tournaments at McKenzie Arena included every league team with all the games played under one roof. Starting with next year’s event, which will use the Bojangles Coliseum and Time Warner Cable Arena, the format could undergo a major change.

Iamarino said the three major options that will be discussed before the athletic directors’ vote Friday are leaving the tournament the way it is, including every team but playing first-round games at campus sites and limiting the fields to the top eight teams.

“I do think there’s a consensus about one thing,” UTC athletic director Rick Hart said. “We’ve tried all 23 teams in one venue and it doesn’t work.”

The schedule in that case is too crowded, leading to playing six games on the second day, starting at 9 a.m. The full schedule also limits the amount of practice time teams have on the arena floor.

“Sometimes you’ve got to try something to confirm how you feel about it, and I think we’ve confirmed that playing women’s games at 9 in the morning isn’t good for the game or the league or the product,” Hart said.

Hart said using two venues will loosen the schedules and allow for all the teams to participate, but a limited number of cities with two suitable facilities might be interested in hosting the tournaments. He said the two-venue format won’t work in Chattanooga because Maclellan Gym no longer is an option.

“We’re not going to put (the women) in Maclellan, so we know in (2011) we’re in one building,” Hart said.

Attending the spring meetings are the athletic directors and football and basketball coaches from each school. Iamarino said there are no major football issues on the agenda, though the NCAA football committee does want feedback from the coaches on the expanded FCS playoff bracket, which will include 20 teams beginning in 2010.

“I think they’re looking for feedback on how to seed the teams, how many teams to seed and that kind of thing,” Iamarino said.