According to a report from CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, the Big 12 and SEC will both allow all 16 members of their leagues to participate in the conference basketball tournaments in 2025.
Rothstein also noted that this differs from the models we see in the ACC and Big Ten, as just 15 of the 18 teams will be eligible to compete in their respective conference tournaments.
The 2024 Big 12 Tournament was the first, and only time in league history that 14 teams competed for a conference basketball championship, as Houston, BYU, Cincinnati and UCF joined the league in the summer of 2023.
Now, the league will provide 16 teams a chance to compete for a title in Kansas City, with the additions of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah and the departures of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC.
The 2024 Tournament saw T.J. Otzelberger’s Iowa State Cyclones take down the top-seeded Houston Cougars in dominant fashion, 69-41.
Houston won the regular season crown after going 15-3 in Big 12 play, just beating out Iowa State who had a 13-5 mark in Big 12 play.
Ten Big 12 teams finished the season with 20 or more wins in 2023-24, and with the addition of two more NCAA Tournament teams from a year ago, the nation’s toughest basketball tournament is about to get even tougher.
