Today is the 35th Anniversary of the renewal of the SEC Basketball Tournament

Wednesday, February 28, 1979. Certainly 35 years is a long time in sports,but its amazing the landscape of today versus that period.The conference orginally had a tournament from its inception in 1933 basically a carry over from the old Southern Conference days. It ceased after the 1952 season. At the time of the renewal only the ACC,Big 8 and SWC of the 'major conferences' had post-season conference tournaments. And,the SWC had only started theirs in 1976. The 'original' Big East would not start until the fall of 1979.



The NCAA tournament had only begun expansion starting with the 1975 season. Through '73-'74 only the designated conference champion would received a bid to the NCAA tournament.Sometimes a one game playoff would be necessary and in the case of the ACC,sometimes a regular season champion highly ranked would either sit home after a tourney loss or reluctantly accept an NIT bid. Most notably were the 1969-1970 South Carolina Gamecocks, who started off the season ranked #1 (only to lose in game one to Tennessee in Columbia)but entered the ACC tournament ranked #3 in the country and lost in 2 OT's to NC State, 42-39 in a slow down game.Today that team may have still been a national one seed,yet they wound up turning down an NIT bid.

In 1978-1979 only one "at large team" would receive an NCAA bid along with the conference representative,which would now be the conference tournament champion.Coaches were concerned the champion could be left out of the NCAA tourney as the 1977-1978 season only produced one tournament team, Kentucky (who did win the National Title)but no other team was selected as an 'at large team' nor even more shocking did a team receive an NIT bid.

The tournament, which was held at Birmingham's Civic Center, had a really odd format in the first season. The regular season champion and the second place team would receive a two game bye all the way to the semifinals where there opponent would be playing its third game in three days.LSU won the regular season championship with a 14-4 mark and Tennessee outlasted Vanderbilt and Alabama with a 12-6 mark to secure the second place seed.

Day one's afternoon session started with Alabama easily beating Florida, 81-64 and Kentucky holding off Ole Miss, 82-77. The night session featured two big upsets, with Georgia beating Miss State 75-72 and Auburn upsetting Vanderbilt, 59-53.

(Vanderbilt had been in and out of the top 20 all season until the last two weeks of the year. The Commodores had been in first place throughout January and seemed to be in control of the second seed bye until mid February. Nonetheless Vandy had their first winning season since 1976 with an 18-9 mark and 11-7 record in the SEC.Head Coach Wayne Dobbs was named UPI "SEC Coach of the Year" during the tournament.The next day Vandy dismissed him for reasons that to this day have never been crystal clear but appeared to stem from "an improper relationship" with a female (adult, 35+ -- not a student) in the AD dept and not coming clean when confronted with it.May be the only coach to win a 'Coach of the Year' award and get fired on the same day.)

Day two featured arguably the finest session/double header in SEC tournament to this day.In game one Kentucky defeated Alabama 101-100 in regulation. Remember,no shot clock nor three point shot. Alabama led 55-49 at halftime. Both teams shot lights out with UK shooting 68% and Alabama shooting 58%. All five UK starters were in double figures and Alabama's Reggie "Mule" King scored 38 points.

Not to be outdone, Auburn and Georgia staged a four overtime classic with Auburn winning 95-91. Oddly enough, Georgia never led in the game.Georgia's Walter Daniels played with a heavy heart as he was notified after the Miss State game the night before that his father had passed away after a long illness.After driving back to Macon after the Miss State game, after consulting with his family Daniels returned to Birmingham on no sleep and played in the Auburn game.

(after the game was over Georgia's players were starving. Their hotel's restaurant had long closed so they stayed on the bus and approached a Huddle House near the Civic Center.However,they were greeted to yellow tape as the 24 hr restaurant had just been robbed and the police had it closed.They went back to the hotel and raided various snack machines.)

The semifinals started with crowd favorite Kentucky facing regular season champion LSU.Even with Dwight Anderson (who would transfer to Southern Cal after the season) breaking his wrist in the opening minute, Kentucky got out to a 25-18 lead and led 43-30 at halftime. For the first time ever, LSU had swept the regular season series vs the Cats,so a 13 pt lead wasn't daunting.But it was. Kentucky stormed out on a 17-2 run to start the second half and led 60-32. LSU came back to make the final more respectable at 80-67.

Tennessee had finished the season with a six game winning streak,but was stale at first after the layoff. Auburn, only 13-16, finally ran out of gas after leading 57-56 with under 5:00 left as Tennessee pulled away to a misleading 75-64 final.

Somewhat fittingly, Tennessee and Kentucky met in the final. The two had been SEC co-champs in 1971-1972 and 1976-1977. The Vols had swept the regular season series becoming the first team to win twice at Rupp Arena.

Tennessee coach Don DeVoe was in his first year as head coach having replaced 'interim coach' Cliff Wettig who had taken over for Ray Mears who was the Vols' coach from 1961-1977. Mears had never hestitated to stall, or slow down a game and evidently he left a manual for DeVoe to use on slowdown tactics. Kentucky led 44-37 at halftime. But the Vols caught up and Kentucky wouldn't come out of their zone. Therefore,UT held the ball for 7 minutes without shooting and the two went to overtime at 55.

Tennessee scored more in overtime than they did in the second half scoring 4 pts in the first :19 to win, 75-69. Kentucky's Kyle Macy was named tournament MVP.The Vols got the league's automatic bid and won their first ever NCAA tournament game by downing Eastern Kentucky before losing to Mideast #1 seed (this was the first year of seeding by the NCAA) Notre Dame 73-67 at Middle Tennessee's Murphy Center in Murfreesboro. LSU did get the at large bid and defeated Appalachian State as a #3 seed before losing to Magic Johnson and Michigan State in the Sweet 16. Kentucky received an NIT bid and lost at home to Clemson by one. Neither Alabama,Miss State nor Vanderbilt received a bid to the NIT.