The Sun Belt Men's Basketball Tournament has been played every year since the formation of the Sun Belt conference for the 1976-1977 academic year. The winner of the tournament is guaranteed an automatic berth into the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. The Sun Belt has a storied basketball history, sending multiple teams into the NCAA tournament in the 1980s and 1990s (most recently 1994), and then again in 2008 when both regular season champion South Alabama, and tournament winner Western Kentucky received bids.