The 1996 Southwest Conference baseball tournament was the league's annual postseason tournament used to determine the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

's (SWC) automatic bid to the

1996 NCAA Division I baseball tournament The 1996 NCAA Division I baseball tournament was played at the end of the 1996 NCAA Division I baseball season to determine the national champion of college baseball. The tournament concluded with eight teams competing in the College World Serie ...

. The tournament was held from May 15 through 18 at

Dan Law Field Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park, nicknamed "The Law", is the home stadium of the Texas Tech Red Raiders baseball team in Lubbock, Texas. It is located on the Texas Tech University campus, adjacent to Jones AT&T Stadium and Fuller Track. Dan L ...

on the campus of

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sy ...

in Lubbock, Texas, and drew a total attendance of 31,542. This was the first time the SWC tournament was held in Lubbock, and the final conference tournament before the conference disbanded. The sixth-seeded

Rice Owls Rice University athletic teams are known as the Rice Owls. The name comes from the owls in Rice's crest. Rice participates in NCAA Division I athletics. A member of Conference USA, Rice sponsors teams in seven men's and seven women's NCAA sanct ...

went undefeated to win the team's first SWC tournament under fifth-season head coach

Wayne Graham Wayne may refer to: People with the given name and surname * Wayne (given name) * Wayne (surname) Geographical Places with name ''Wayne'' may take their name from a person with that surname; the most famous such person was Gen. "Mad" Antho ...

Format and seeding

The 1996 SWC tournament was the first, and only, to feature all teams in a

double-elimination tournament A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...

over four rounds. The SWC regular season champion,

Texas Longhorns The Texas Longhorns are the athletic teams representing the University of Texas at Austin. The teams are sometimes referred to as the Horns and take their name from Longhorn cattle that were an important part of the development of Texas, and a ...

, received the tournament's only first-round bye while the remaining six teams were seeded based on their regular season conference standings. TCU claimed the fourth seed by tiebreaker over Baylor, while Rice earned the sixth seed over Houston by tiebreaker.

Tournament

References

{{Southwest Conference Baseball Tournament navbox

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 ...

Baseball in Lubbock, Texas Southwest Conference Baseball Tournament Southwest Conference baseball tournament