The 2012 Ohio Valley Conference men's basketball tournament began on February 29 and ended on March 3 with Murray State claiming the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
6/7 seeds[2] The top eight eligible men's basketball teams in the Ohio Valley Conference received berths in the conference tournament.
The winner earned an automatic berth in the 2012 NCAA tournament.
SIU Edwardsville was ineligible for the conference tournament, due to its transition to Division I.
Teams were seeded by record within the conference, with a tiebreaker system to seed teams with identical conference records.