Future SEC Baseball Tourney Format Approved: Starting in 2025, all 16 Teams will Participate
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Release) – All 16 Southeastern Conference baseball teams will participate in the league’s annual post-season tournament in a single-elimination format beginning with the 2025 baseball season, it was 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 a six-day period. The existing format will be in effect for the 2024 SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, May 21-26.
The revised format which debuts in May 2025 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 last year 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.
SEC BASEBALL TOURNAMENT FORMAT (beginning May 2025)
Tuesday
Game 1: Seed No. 9 vs. Seed No. 16
Game 2: Seed No. 12 vs. Seed No. 13
Game 3: Seed No. 10 vs. Seed No. 15
Game 4: Seed No. 11 vs. Seed No. 14
Wednesday
Game 5: Winner Game 1 vs. Seed No. 8
Game 6: Winner Game 2 vs. Seed No. 5
Game 7: Winner Game 3 vs. Seed No. 7
Game 8: Winner Game 4 vs. Seed No. 6
Thursday
Game 9: Winner Game 5 vs. Seed No. 1
Game 10: Winner Game 6 vs. Seed No. 4
Friday
Game 11: Winner Game 7 vs. Seed No. 2
Game 12: Winner Game 8 vs. Seed No. 3
Saturday
Game 13: Winner Game 9 vs. Winner Game 10
Game 14: Winner Game 11 vs. Winner Game 12
Sunday
Game 15: Championship – Winner Game 13 vs. Winner Game 14
Evelyn Van Pelt
Evelyn has covered sports for over two decades, beginning her journalism career as a sports writer for a newspaper in Austin, Texas. She attended Texas A&M and majored in English. Evelyn's love for Ole Miss began when her daughter Katie attended the university on a volleyball scholarship. Evelyn created the Rebel Walk in 2013 and has served as publisher and managing editor since its inception.
