NEW ORLEANS – The Sun Belt Conference announced Wednesday that it has modified its COVID-19 protocols for the 2021-22 men’s and women’s basketball season effective immediately.
 
Games that cannot be played due to COVID-19 will be canceled and considered a no-contest and will not be rescheduled. The minimum threshold required to compete is seven (7) student-athletes (scholarship or non-scholarship), plus one full-time coach. If a team meets that minimum threshold, they are required to play. Teams may choose to play with less than the minimum threshold.

Conference play for both men’s and women’s teams is set to start on Thursday, December 30.

Seeding in the Sun Belt Championship will be based on overall conference winning percentage. However, teams will be required to play a minimum of 80% of the average number of conference games played in order to use their overall conference winning percentage for seeding in the conference championship. Teams falling below the 80% threshold will be seeded at the bottom of the championship bracket with overall conference winning percentage, among the teams that fall below the threshold, being used to determine their seed for the tournament.
 
The 2022 Sun Belt Conference Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments is scheduled for March 2-7, at the Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Fla. All 12 Sun Belt Conference men’s and women’s teams will compete in the single-elimination tournament with the two tournament champions earning automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament. First-round games are scheduled for Wednesday, March 2 and both championship games are slated for Monday, March 7, 2022.