ST. LOUIS – Southern Illinois, which won its fifth Missouri Valley Conference women's basketball regular-season title and first since 2006-07, has earned the No. 1 seed in the MVC Tournament. The Salukis finished the regular season with a record of 20-8, 15-3 MVC. SIU will be the top seed in the MVC tournament for the fourth time in program history (1987, 1990, 2007, 2022).
Missouri State (14-4 MVC) and UNI (13-5 MVC) are the second and third seeds, respectively. Illinois State (12-6 MVC) and Loyola Chicago (10-8 MVC) earned the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds, while Valparaiso (9-9 MVC) also avoids Thursday as the No. 6 seed, claiming the head-to-head tiebreaker with Drake due to the season sweep of the Bulldogs.
This year's tournament - the 15th neutral-site event in the conference's history - begins on Thursday, March 10, at TaxSlayer Center in Moline, Illinois. The top seed has won the conference tournament in 19 of 35 seasons in which a tournament was played and a team that has won or shared the regular-season title has gone on to win the tournament title 22 times. Top seeds have six runner-up finishes. Teams seeded No. 2 have won the tournament five times and finished as the runner-up 13 times.
The tournament, which features nine games over four days, culminates on Sunday, March 13, with the title game airing live for the first time on ESPNU at 1:05 p.m. (CT). Both semifinals on Saturday, all four quarterfinals on Friday and the two opening round games on Thursday will be available live on ESPN+.
No. 2 seed Missouri State has won the most MVC Tournament titles, 11, of any Valley school, while the top seed Salukis will search for their first title since 1990.
2022 Missouri Valley Conference Women's Basketball Tournament
Thursday, March 10
Game 1 -- #8 Indiana State (10-19, 5-13 MVC) vs. #9 Evansville (8-21, 2-16 MVC), 4 p.m. [ESPN+]
Game 2 -- #7 Drake (17-12, 9-9 MVC) vs. #10 Bradley (4-23, 1-17 MVC), 7 p.m. [ESPN+]
Friday, March 11
Game 3 -- #1 Southern Illinois (20-8, 15-3 MVC) vs. Winner Game 1, 12 p.m. [ESPN+]
Game 4 -- #4 Illinois State (16-13, 12-6 MVC) vs. #5 Loyola Chicago (18-11, 10-8 MVC), 2:30 p.m. [ESPN+]
Game 5 -- #2 Missouri State (23-6, 14-4 MVC) vs. Winner of Game 2, 6 p.m. [ESPN+]
Game 6 -- #3 UNI (20-9, 13-5 MVC) vs. #6 Valparaiso (11-18, 9-9 MVC), 8:30 p.m. [ESPN+]
Saturday, March 12
Game 7 -- Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4, 1:30 p.m. [ESPN+]
Game 8 -- Winner Game 5 vs. Winner Game 6, 4 p.m. [ESPN+]
Sunday, March 13
Championship -- Winner Game 7 vs. Winner Game 8, 1 p.m. [ESPNU]