Kenny Larabee, NRG Media
The Big Ten Conference announced Thursday the creation of an end-of-season tournament for the 2026 season. The tournament will include 15 of the conference’s teams and will run from Nov. 20-25 in Fishers, Ind., an Indianapolis suburb. The winner of the conference tournament will earn the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
To accommodate the new event, the Big Ten schedule will be cut from 20 to 17 games, with each team playing each other once instead of three home-and-home series. The tournament is being brought back one year after the SEC reinstated its conference tournament after a nearly 20-year absence, with Texas A&M defeating Kentucky in the national finals.