The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference men's basketball tournament is the annual men's conference

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

championship tournament for the

Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level, which operates in the western Midwestern United States. Nine of its ...

. The tournament has been held annually since 2000. It is a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

and seeding is based on regular season records. The winner receives the conference's automatic bid to the

NCAA Men's Division II Basketball Championship The NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament (officially styled by the NCAA as a "Championship" instead of a "Tournament") is an annual championship tournament for colleges and universities that are members of NCAA Division II, a grouping of ...

Tournament format

Between its establishment in 2000 and 2012, the tournament featured only the top 8 teams from the conference, with all eight teams active from the quarterfinal round. After 2013, however, the tournament expanded to 16 teams, with teams seeded based on their performance in either the North or South Division of the Northern Sun. The first round, which features all sixteen teams, pairs the top-seeded teams from the North and South Divisions against the eighth-seeded team from the opposite division. In turn, the second-seeded team from each of these teams' brackets comes from the opposite division (i.e. the top-seeded team from the North would ideally oppose the second-seeded team from the South and vice versa for the other division's top team). This pattern continues for the third- and fourth-seeded teams. In all instances of the tournament, the semifinal and final rounds have been played at a pre-determined venue, which has also hosted the quarterfinal round since 2012. From 2000 to 2011, these sites were the on-campus gymnasium of Northern Sun teams. Since 2012, however, these have been neutral-site arenas not home to any Northern Sun programs.

Results

Championship appearances by school

* Concordia–St. Paul, Mary (ND), Minnesota–Crookston, Minot State, and

Sioux Falls Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up t ...

have yet to reach the NSIC tournament final. * Minnesota–Morris never reached the finals of the NSIC tournament before departing the conference.

References

{{NCAA men's college basketball tournament navbox NCAA Division II men's basketball conference tournaments

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 ...

Recurring sporting events established in 2000