On Oct. 13, the Big South announced they were opening the option of holding this year’s men’s and women’s basketball postseason tournaments to any member school aside from Coastal Carolina.
Despite the potential exposure hosting either tournament could provide for the program and the university, Longwood will not be placing a bid.
“While hosting the conference championship would be a wonderful opportunity for our student-athletes, Longwood and Farmville, there are many logistical hurdles we would have to overcome in too short a period of time,” said Chris Cook, Longwood Athletics assistant vice president for athletics communications.
Although Coastal Carolina was set to host the tournaments, their failure to announce their decision to leave the conference two years in advance rendered them ineligible to host championships according to the Big South’s bylaws. Coastal Carolina only provided notice a few days more than a year in advance.
Due to this relatively late change, the 2016 men’s and women’s basketball championships will also be spread across two weekends as “separate events,” according to a press release by Big South Assistant Commissioner Mark Simpson.
This means they can be hosted at two different schools.
The championships, as “premiere events” within the league, require “significant accommodations” to host, including lodging options, staffing and facility preparation alongside other potential considerations, said Cook.
“With our first basketball games less than a month away and fall sports currently in full swing, we will instead maintain our focus as a department on ensuring that our own home events and sport operations remain quality productions for our student-athletes and fans,” said Cook.
Campbell, High Point, UNC Asheville and Winthrop have placed bids for the men’s basketball tournament. High Point and UNC Asheville have placed bids for women’s basketball in addition to the men’s.
The decision on the men’s and women’s tournament locations are expect to be decided by early November, according to the press release by Simpson.
Coastal Carolina has consistently hosted the Big South conference’s postseason basketball tournament in Conway, South Carolina for the past three years, spanning 2013-15, ever since they finished building their new HTC Center during the 2012-13 school year.
Men’s basketball head coach Jayson Gee did not express any worry in regards to the currently unknown location of the tournament and Longwood’s decision against an attempt to host it.
“As we demonstrated last March, location does not affect our program’s ability to perform in the postseason. That said, the Big South Championship is months away, and our focus right now is on preparing for our season opener," said Gee.
The men’s championship will occur Mar. 3-6 while the women’s will be the following weekend, Mar. 10-13.
Moving the women’s tournament gives the champion only a week, rather than the usual two weeks to prepare for the first round of the NCAA tournament. It also caused the entire regular season schedule to be revised to end on Mar. 5, shifting everything a week later.
Aside from just basketball championships changing, the baseball and outdoor track and field tournaments were also set to occur at Coastal Carolina and will move as well. Universities were not given the opportunity to submit bids for these sports.
The Big South already announced that outdoor track and field—a sport not sponsored by Longwood—will move to Liberty University while the site of baseball will not be revealed until later in the fall.
Coastal Carolina can still host the championships of sports with “earned seed” formats “in the interest of fairness” to the university’s student-athletes, according to Simpson. Therefore, the conference tournament first rounds of men’s soccer, women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse can be held at Coastal Carolina if their position deems it.
The majority of other varsity sports will remain unaffected by Coastal Carolina’s bylaw violation.
