By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

The Missouri Valley Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will have a new look, and they’ll be together in the same arena.

The conference announced on Monday that both tournaments will be played at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis next March, with the top two seeds in both earning byes into the semifinals.

It’s a move that conference commissioner Jeff Jackson hopes will provide some protection for the top seeds to get into the NCAA Tournament, as well as a chance to get a better seed or maybe additional teams into the expanded 76-team field.

“We see this as an opportunity to enhance our tournament to create a situation where both the men’s basketball championship and the women’s basketball championship are synergized,” Jackson said. “We see more people coming to St. Louis, which has treated the Valley with open arms. We just don’t see any downside here.”

The tournaments will be March 3-7 at the Enterprise Center in downtown St. Louis. Four women’s games will be played on March 3, with four men’s games set for the following day. Two women’s and two men’s games will be on March 5. The women’s semifinals will sandwich the men’s semifinals on March 6 because of the men’s TV contract with CBS. The championship games for both teams will be on March 7.

The men’s tournament has been in St. Louis since 1991. The women’s tournament has been at a variety of sites since its inception. Last season’s tournament was played at Xtream Arena in Coralville.

“We’re going to have men’s basketball fans who are going to become women’s basketball fans, and women’s basketball fans are going to become men’s basketball fans,” Jackson said. “I think both of our champions will get a chance to feed off of each other, and Arch Madness will only grow and prosper.”

Both tournaments, though, will be 10 teams, leaving the last-place team out.

“We’ve only taken one team out the tournament, and somebody could correct me on this, but I think it’s been since 2002 that the last place team in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament has won a game on the men’s side,” Jackson said. “So again, I just don’t see any concerns about what we’ve been doing in regards to the men’s basketball tournament, and I think we all know, especially those of you who have been at our tournament for an extended period of time, when you’re a team that is struggling and you’re finishing last in a conference like ours, you’re not exactly buying a boat full of tickets that come to St. Louis and watch that tournament.”

Sixth seed Northern Iowa defeated fifth seed UIC in the championship game of last season’s men’s tournament. Top seed Belmont was eliminated by No. 9 seed Drake in the quarterfinals, and second seed Bradley lost to UNI in the semifinals.

Top seed Murray State won the women’s tournament, defeating 10th seed Evansville in the championship game. Second seed Belmont was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Evansville.

Jackson said a change to the bracket has been in discussion within the conference for a while.

“It’s just a question of timing, when it started, and there’s always a lot of things that lead to a nexus point, whether you’re talking about Missouri State’s departure (after the 2025 season) and that taking us down to 11 teams, whether you’re talking about the NCAA tournament expanding to 76 teams, and us looking at maybe being more purposeful in our protection of our first and second seeds,” Jackson said. “This is not something that’s taken place over a short period of time. This is something that we’ve had extensive conversations about for more than a few months.”

Jackson, who will become a member of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee in September, said getting a good seed in the NCAA Tournament is a concern for the conference. UNI was a 12th seed in last season’s tournament, losing to fifth seed St. John’s in the first round.

“The most important thing that we started talking about, probably about maybe 16 months ago, was the double bye,” Jackson said. “I think we were very much mindful of the fact that admission to the NCAA tournament is not an easy thing to do, especially when you’re talking about multiple bids, but with the onset of the tournament going to 76 teams, it’s even now more important when you’re looking at opportunities for success, opportunity for financial gain, to be a 12 seed. There’s a huge difference right now between what looks like being a 12 seed and being a 13 seed.”

The opportunity to get a double-bye, Jackson said, will help create even more interest in the 20-game conference regular-season schedule.

“There’s a lot more to play for if you’re in those top three or four teams,” he said. “There’s a huge variance right now between being two and being three, and we’re going to see that manifest itself in a very positive way in our conference schedule and our conference competition.”

Jackson received a couple of questions about negative fan feedback to the change.

“I’ll go back to, is it really a big change?” he said. “I’m not sure it’s as big a change as people think, but again, I’m not shy or bashful about the concept of we want to reward our teams that have the most success in regular-season play.”

Photo: Northern Iowa players celebrate winning the Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball tournament last March. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)