Minor Changes Coming to the WCC Tournament

For the second year in a row, the West Coast Conference has made a change to its postseason tournament format, according to a press release from the conferences website. While the change is not as significant as it was last season, the tournaments format will be a little different in 2015.

Before the 2013-2014 tournament format, the one and two seeds received double byes and were automatically placed into the semifinals. The three, four, five, six and seven seeds were automatically placed in the quarterfinals, while the eight and nine seeds battled it out in a play-in game for the last spot in the quarters.

With the addition of Pacific in 2013-2014, a change to the tournament’s format was imminent. Instead of giving the first two seeds a double bye, the top six seeds are now given byes into the quarterfinals, with seeds seven through 10 matching up for the last two quarterfinal berths.

This time around, the dates in which the games will be played is being modified. Last year, the opening round games were played on Thursday, the quarterfinal games were played on Saturday, the semifinals were played on Monday and the championship was played on Tuesday.

In 2015, the opening round games will now be played on Friday, giving the opening round team’s little rest in between games.

While this change might seem insignificant, it reduces the amount of off-days, giving fans a better overall experience. With Sunday the only off-day – presumably due to the religious beliefs of BYU – the fans get the same amount of games in a lesser amount of time.

The WCC tournament has seen some massive overhaul since the expansion of BYU, and subsequently the tournament format has improved. This small tweak has contributed to making the WCC tournament the best it could possibly be.