LITTLE ROCK — The Sun Belt Conference hopes more teams, two courts and a better start time for its men's championship game will make the 2010 post-season basketball tournament a success.
The conference announced Saturday that all 13 men's and women's basketball teams would automatically advance to the 2009 Sun Belt Conference Tournament at Summit Arena in Hot Springs.
In addition, the start time for the men's championship game has been moved to 6 p.m. Central on ESPN2. It has traditionally started much later and began at 9 p.m. last year. The women's championship game will start at 1 p.m. and will be televised by ESPNU.
Only the top eight men's and women's teams have advanced to the championship site the past three seasons. First-round games played previously at campus sites have been moved to Hot Springs.
"I think the main reason was the response we got from our membership coming back from Hot Springs. The main sentiment was that it was a great experience," said Sun Belt Conference associate commissioner Rick Mello, a former athletic director at UALR. "We think the best way to capitalize on this was to put ourselves in a situation where everybody knew they were going. They could go through a year of planning with absolute certainty."
The dates for the 2010 tournament haven't changed - it will still be played March 6-9 - but the format has been altered. The tournament will use two basketball courts for the first two days, in Summit Arena and the adjacent Hot Springs Convention Center's Exhibit Hall.
"You can buy a session ticketand go back and forth to either game," Mello said. "You can go over and watch the end of the half of a game. We're going to makeit like a festival atmosphere."
Summit Arena seats 6,000 for basketball. The Exhibit Hall at Hot Springs Convention Center, which is connected to the end of Summit Arena, has 72,000 square feet of space. Theplan is to bring in a portable basketball court, scorer's table and temporary seating to make it into a basketball arena. The conference hopes to seat between 1,500 to 1,700 people in the secondary arena.
UALR once used a similar setup in the middle and late 1980s at Little Rock's Statehouse Convention Center.
"We're bringing in the professional seats, the seats they use to supplement the ACC Tournament," Mello said. "Basically, we're going to put a court in the convention center and do it as first class as possible to add to the overall atmosphere."
Mello said they would use "common sense" and could move a game with attendance expected to exceed the capacity of the convention center to Summit Arena, if necessary.
"We want to make this tournament a celebration of our league every year," Mello said.
Sports, Pages 30 on 08/30/2009