There will be no more SEC East and West champions in basketball anymore.

After conference coaches proposed a plan to eliminate the divisions and merge into a single 12-team league, conference athletic directors approved the plan. The goal, according to ESPN reporting, is to enable more teams to reach the NCAA Tournament without hurting the elite SEC teams, while also improving the perception of the league’s strength.

It will go into effect this year, although the scheduling system remains the same for at least this year. UK will play former East teams Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee twice each and will play the former West teams once.

However, plans are being discussed of adding two games to the schedule to make it 18 games (or even 22 games, but only Calipari mentioned that format as a possibility to Andy Katz and 22 appears unlikely) in 2012-13, meaning each team would play 7 teams twice and the remaining 4 teams once.

See the original ESPN story here.