It was announced over the past weekend that for the first time in conference history, the 2014 Big Ten Baseball Tournament will feature eight teams expanding from its previous format of six entries. The tournament which will be held this year on May 21-25, at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska, will remain a double elimination tournament.
From the Big Ten press release:
The tournament’s double-elimination format will culminate with a single championship game on Sunday, with the winner earning the tournament title and the conference’s automatic berth to the NCAA Championship. All eight teams will begin play in one of two brackets, with the No. 1, No. 4, No. 5 and No. 8 seeds appearing in one bracket and the No. 2, No. 3, No. 6 and No. 7 seeds appearing in the other bracket.
The tournament begins with four contests on Wednesday and Thursday and two games slated for Friday. Saturday will feature the winners of each bracket facing the remaining one-loss team from the opposite bracket in the semifinals. As many as four games are scheduled for Saturday, with the opportunity for two if necessary games to be played to determine Sunday’s championship game participants.
To get a better sense of the whole thing, you can see the full tourney bracket for the May tournament here.
It was probably a smart move. With relatively new induction of Nebraska into the Big Ten last year and the two more teams eventually coming into the conference, there had to be some changes to accommodate the larger field.
Make some room in your schedule in May. The Illini will most certainly be going to Omaha now.