The 1996

Conference USA men's basketball tournament The Conference USA men's basketball tournament is held annually following the end of the regular season of NCAA Division I Men's Basketball. Format and hosts After the conference realignment, the tournament was held at FedExForum in Memphis, Tenn ...

was held March 6–9 at

The Pyramid A pyramid is a structure with triangular lateral surfaces converging to an apex. Pyramid may also refer to: Anatomy and medicine * Petrous part of the temporal bone, the pyramid * Pyramid (brainstem), the anterior part of medulla oblongata Ga ...

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. This was the first edition of the tournament. Top-seeded

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

defeated Marquette in the inaugural championship game, 85–84, to clinch their first Conference USA men's tournament championship. The Bearcats, in turn, received an automatic bid to the 1996 NCAA tournament. They were joined in the tournament by fellow C-USA members Louisville, Marquette, and Memphis, who all earned at-large bids.

Format

Conference USA was formed in 1995 by eleven former members the

Metro Conference The Metropolitan Collegiate Athletic Conference, popularly known as the Metro Conference, was an NCAA Division I athletics conference, so named because its six charter members were all in urban metropolitan areas, though its later members did n ...

and the

Great Midwest Conference The Great Midwest Conference was an NCAA Division I athletics conference that existed from 1991 to 1995. History It was formed in 1990 with six members: Cincinnati and Memphis State (now Memphis) from the Metro Conference, UAB from the Sun Bel ...

(

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

, VCU, and

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

were excluded). The conference's twelfth member,

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, was to join for the 1996–97 season. For scheduling purposes, the eleven teams were placed into one of three three- or four-team divisions (Red, White, and Blue). All eleven teams participated in the tournament and were seeded based on their regular season conference records, regardless of division. The top five teams were given byes into the quarterfinal round, and the bottom six teams were entered into the preliminary first round.

Bracket

References

{{1996 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament navbox Conference USA men's basketball tournament

Tournament A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...