The SEC Tournament's renewal after a 27 year hiatus started back on this date in 1979

For the tl/dr crowd, there are plenty of Brandon Miller pillow fights to engage .

Hard to believe next week starts the 44th year of the revival of the tournament. For an old guy like me the fact that its now been going 17 years longer than it was dormant. I remember in '79 thinking 1952 might as well have been 1952.

Really odd format, that only lasted this one year. The top two seeds, regular season champion LSU and second place finisher Tennessee received two day byes. 3 seed through 10 started day one and would the winners would play the following day while the Tigers and Vols rested.

Some pretty interesting story lines during the tournament. After Georgia's upset of Mississippi State on day one, Georgia's Walter Daniels' father died of a heart attack at his home in Macon. Daniels drove from Birmingham to Macon to be with his family and drove back to Birmingham to play Auburn,who had upset 3 seed Vanderbilt, 59-53.

That Auburn-Georgia game followed the Kentucky-Alabama game that was won by Kentucky, 101-100 played of course,with no shot clock or 3-pt line.

Then the Auburn-Georgia game went into four overtimes,with Auburn winning, 95-91. Amazingly Georgia never lead in the game. Georgia's night got worse. Remember this was 1979 and food options and planning were different. The game ended well after midnight and the restaurants at Georgia's hotel were closed. So the Bulldogs' bus drove to a nearby Waffle House. They are created to police cars and yellow tape as the WH had just been robbed. Georgia then went back to the motel with coaches and players providing one another change for vending machine snacks.

Vanderbilt, 18-9 and 12-6 in the SEC who had spent most of January and early February in the top 20, had their coach Wayne Dobbs named UPI SEC Coach of the year. Three days later after Dobbs won the award, Vanderbilt athletic director Roy Kramer dismissed him. Kramer's good friend from the Midwest,Bob Knight called Kramer and recommended a fomrer player and assistant of his.Kramer thanked him and told him he was leaning towards a former Louisville HS coach, Richard Schmidt who was an assistant at Virginia. So, Mike Kryzezewski stayed at Army.

Kentucky blasted regular season champ LSU 80-67,much worse than the final margin would indicate.With this being year one of the SEC Tourney and the NCAA only in year 5 of more than one team from a conference getting an NCAA bid, it was presumed LSU would get a bid, but not known for sure.

In the end Tennessee beat Kentucky, 75-69 in OT to win the SEC Tournament. Tennessee and LSU went to the NCAA's and Alabama,Kentucky and Miss State went to the NIT.

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