The 2026 NEC Men's Basketball Tournament was the postseason men's basketball tournament for the NEC for the 2025–26 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The tournament took place over three dates between March 4 and 10, 2026, and all tournament games were played in the home arenas of the higher-seeded school. The winner, LIU, received the conference's automatic bid to the 2026 NCAA tournament.
This was also the first men's tournament held under the "NEC" name. On October 2, 2025, the conference changed its name from the Northeast Conference to its longstanding initialism of NEC.
Seeds Eight of the conference's ten teams qualified for the tournament. Teams were seeded by record within the conference, with a tiebreaker system to seed teams with identical conference records.
NOTE: New Haven was ineligible for this tournament due to its transition from NCAA Division II. SeedSchoolConferenceRecordTiebreaker1Tiebreaker21LIU 15–32Central Connecticut 12–63Mercyhurst 10–81–1 vs. Central Connecticut4Le Moyne 10–80–2 vs. Central ConnecticutNew Haven 9–95Stonehill 8–101–1 vs. Central Connecticut3–1 vs. Mercyhurst/Le Moyne6Fairleigh Dickinson 8–101–1 vs. Central Connecticut2–2 vs. Mercyhurst/Le Moyne7Wagner 8–100–2 vs. Central Connecticut 8 Chicago State 5–131–1 vs. Central Connecticut Saint Francis 5–130–2 vs. Central Connecticut
Schedule GameTime *MatchupScoreAttendanceTelevisionQuarterfinals – Wednesday, March 417:00 p.m.No. 8 Chicago State at No. 1 LIU75–79886NEC Front Row27:00 p.m.No. 7 Wagner at No. 2 Central Connecticut70–602,10537:00 p.m.No. 6 Fairleigh Dickinson at No. 3 Mercyhurst61–701,02747:00 p.m.No. 5 Stonehill at No. 4 Le Moyne81–71781Semifinals – Saturday, March 7512:00 p.m.No. 5 Stonehill at No. 3 Mercyhurst51–56567YES/NESN Nation/ESPN+62:00 p.m.No. 7 Wagner at No. 1 LIU56–641,028Final – Tuesday, March 1077:00 p.m.No. 3 Mercyhurst at No. 1 LIU70–791,562ESPN2* Game times in ET; rankings denotes tournament seed
Bracket Teams will be reseeded after each round with highest remaining seeds receiving home-court advantage.
Source:
Game summaries NOTE: all times are in Eastern Standard Time (UTC−5) for Quarterfinal and Semifinal rounds; Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4) for Final round Quarterfinal Round
Semifinal Round
Final Round
Awards and honors All-Tournament Team PlayerTeamBernie Blunt IIIMercyhurstMalachi DavisLIUGreg Gordon LIUDavante HackettStonehillQuadir MartinMercyhurst MVP denotes Most Valuable Player
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Statistics
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Tournament highlights
Quarterfinals Semifinals Final
LIU was guaranteed the NEC bid regardless of the outcome as Mercyhurst was ineligible for the NCAA tournament due to being in transition from Division II.
References