Classification Division | Teams 9 | |
Format two bracket Double-elimination tournament
with championship game Site Fluor Field at the West End
Greenville, SC | ||
The 2017 Southern Conference Baseball Tournament will be held from May 23 through May 28 at Fluor Field at the West End in Greenville, South Carolina. The annual event determines the conference champion of the Division I Southern Conference in college baseball. The tournament winner earns the league's bid to the 2017 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament. This is the last of 20 athletic championships held by the conference in the 2016–17 academic year.
The tournament was originally held from 1950-53, when the Southern Conference was a large conference composed of several small schools and several large schools, the latter of which would form the Atlantic Coast Conference after the 1953 season. The event was re-established in 1984 and has been held every year since. Defending champion Western Carolina has claimed ten championships, the most of any school, with The Citadel close behind at eight tournament wins. Furman is the only other school current school with multiple championships, having won two. East Tennessee State, UNC Greensboro, and VMI have never won a title, although East Tennessee State and VMI returned to the conference in 2015 after over ten years in other conferences. Mercer claimed the conference championship in its first ever appearance in 2014.
The tournament will be played in Greenville, which has hosted four of the past eight events.
Seeding and format
All nine teams will participate in the tournament, with the bottom two seeds playing a single-elimination play-in round. The remaining teams will then be divided into two brackets and play double-elimination tournaments. The winners of each bracket will play a single championship game.