Sun Belt announces changes to baseball tournament format

Last season following the Sun Belt Conference baseball tournament, I blogged about the overuse of pitchers during the tournament.  Scott Rembisz, who helped lead FIU to the tournament championship despite the Panthers' game one loss to South Alabama, pitched seven innings Thursday (113 pitches), six innings on Saturday (87 pitches) and an inning in the championship game on Sunday (15 pitches).  That's 215 pitches total.  And, that's way too many.  I suggested then that something had to be done to protect coaches from themselves.  And, the conference (by way of its coaches) has decided to do something about it.  They've altered the tournament format to where all eight seeded teams play three games over a four day period, round-robin within each bracket.  The two bracket survivors play one game for the title.  Every team gets a day off.  This is similar to what the ACC does with its tournament.  And, it'd undoubtedly a good move.  I'm critical when I think the league does something wrong.  This time, I think they've done it right. 

Here's the press release, from sunbeltsports.org

http://www.sunbeltsports.org/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=205075844&DB_OEM_ID=4100