Classification Division I Winning coach Tic Price (1st title) | Teams 10 | |
Site Barton Coliseum
Little Rock, AR Champions New Orleans (2nd title) MVP Lewis Sims (New Orleans) | ||
The 1996 Sun Belt Conference Men's Basketball Tournament was held March 1–5 at Barton Coliseum in Little Rock, Arkansas.
New Orleans defeated hosts, and fellow regular season co-champions, Arkansas–Little Rock in the championship game, 57–56, to win their second Sun Belt men's basketball tournament. It was UNO's first Sun Belt title since 1978 and first since being re-admitted to the conference in 1992.
The Privateers, in turn, received an automatic bid to the 1996 NCAA Tournament. No other Sun Belt members were invited to the tournament.
Format
No teams left or joined the Sun Belt before the season, leaving conference membership fixed at ten teams.
With all teams participating in the tournament this year, the field increased from nine to ten teams. With all teams seeded based on regular-season conference records, the top six teams were all placed directly into the quarterfinal round while the four lowest-seeded teams were placed into the preliminary first round.