The Summit League men's basketball tournament, popularly known as The Summit League at the Falls, is the post-season tournament for
NCAA Division I
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...
conference
Summit League
The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States, from Minnesota in the east, to the Dakotas, Nebraska and Colorado to the West, and Mis ...
. The winner of the tournament receives the Summit League's automatic bid into the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship
The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, or The Big Dance, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level ...
. The tournament was first played in 1984, when the league was known as the Association of Mid-Continent Universities (AMCU). The league was also known as the Mid-Continent Conference from 1989 to 2007, after which it was renamed to The Summit League.
Format
Currently, all 9 men's basketball teams
in the Summit League receive a berth in the conference tournament (barring NCAA sanctions). Before the 2022-23 season, only the top 8 conference teams (by conference record) made the tournament. After the 16-game conference season, teams are seeded by conference record with the following tie-breakers:
* Head-to-head competition
* Winning percentage vs. ranked conference teams (starting with #1 and moving down until the tie is broken)
*
NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET)
* Coin flip
Tournament champions
Performance by school
* Teams in bold are currently in the Summit League. Oral Roberts left for the
Southland Conference
The Southland Conference (SLC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the South Central United States (specifically Texas and Louisiana). It participates in the NCAA's Division I for all sports; for football, it participates in ...
after the 2011–12 season, but returned for 2014–15.
* Among current Summit League members,
Denver
Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...
,
North Dakota
North Dakota ( ) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota people, Dakota and Sioux peoples. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minneso ...
,
St. Thomas and
South Dakota
South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...
have reached the tournament final but failed to win the championship, while
Kansas City
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...
has yet to advance to the tournament final. Kansas City, which rejoined in 2020–21, had competed under its academic identity of UMKC during its previous Summit tenure (1994–95 to 2012–13).
Television coverage
See also
*
Summit League women's basketball tournament
References
{{NCAA men's college basketball tournament navbox
Recurring sporting events established in 1984
1984 establishments in the United States