Five teams have done what UK will attempt in SEC tourney. Here’s how they did it.
Since the revival of the Southeastern Conference Tournament in 1979, five teams have done what Kentucky wants to do this week in Nashville: Win four games in four days en route to the championship and an automatic NCAA Tournament bid.
Of those five teams, Georgia circa 2008 makes for an eerily similar precedent.
Losing league record in regular-season play? Check.
An exasperating habit of coming up short in late-game situations? Check.
Failure to make what UK Coach John Calipari calls “daggers” (aka clutch plays)? Check.
Even the distracting uncertainty of a once-in-a-lifetime attack from Mother Nature? Check. Instead of a pandemic, the 2008 SEC Tournament had to adjust to a tornado striking the event site.
Fan attendance dramatically limited? Check. The announced attendances for Georgia’s final three victories were 1,458 and 2,517 and 3,700.
And Georgia topped the four-victories-in-four-days trick. Because of the tornado, the Bulldogs’ path to the championship required winning three games within about a 24-hour period: two on Saturday and then the championship game on Sunday.
“It was an extraordinary feat for that group of guys,” then-Georgia coach Dennis Felton said this week. “I just remain incredibly proud of all those players that pulled it off.”
Felton, now an assistant coach at Fordham, sounded a lot like Calipari in summing up Georgia’s regular season.
“All year that year, we were very, very competitive,” he said. “And we fought like hell. We were right there more nights than not. But we just wouldn’t make that one or two shots at times we needed them to get over the hump and win.”
Georgia lost eight games that season by a single-digit margin, five of which were by five or fewer points. That included losses to Kentucky by scores of 63-58 and 61-55.
Then, in the SEC Tournament, Georgia began its run by winning two overtime games: against Ole Miss in the Georgia Dome and then Kentucky in Georgia Tech’s campus arena. In the semifinals, Georgia beat Mississippi State 64-60. The championship game was a relative rout: 66-57 over Arkansas.
You want daggers? Dave Bliss banked in a shot with four-tenths of a second left to beat Ole Miss.
Against Kentucky, 6-foot-1 freshman Zac Swansey hit a three-pointer with 1.2 seconds left to win the game.
What can Kentucky glean from Georgia’s sudden adeptness at making clutch shots? Felton acknowledged not having a secret to reveal.
“If I could explain that, I would have done something to alter those outcomes earlier in the year,” he said. “It just happened.”
Swansey was not supposed to take the shot that beat Kentucky. During a preceding timeout, Felton set up a play for Billy Humphrey to shoot the decisive shot. Humphrey was averaging 12.2 points a game, Swansey 3.9.
As Felton recalled, Georgia ran the play perfectly. Humphrey was open. But . . .
“My man looked at him,” Felton said of Swansey. “Instead of hitting him (with a pass), he spun and took a three himself. As he did that, Billy Humphrey threw up his hands like what the hell?! And he made the shot.”
Yes, Felton said, luck has a role to play.
Felton also saw good fortune at play with Ole Miss as the opening-game opponent. Georgia had lost to the Rebels in the last game of the regular season.
“The first game is the most important,” Felton said. Whether opening-game jitters or looking ahead, players can be distracted in first games. But having lost to Ole Miss so recently helped Georgia players concentrate on the task at hand, Felton said.
Georgia matched its regular-season total of four victories in its memorable run to the 2008 SEC Tournament title. Of the five teams to win four games en route to the SEC Tournament title, the Bulldogs are one of three who had losing regular-season SEC records. Kentucky (8-9) would be the fourth.
Auburn did it in 2019, bouncing back from an 8-10 regular season to win the SEC Tournament as an eight-seed (UK’s seed this year).
On Feb. 23 of that year, Auburn looked a long way from a championship team. The Tigers lost 80-53 at Kentucky on that date. UK out-shot Auburn 54.5-to-32.8 percent. UK out-rebounded Auburn 43-24.
After the game, Auburn Coach Bruce Pearl sought to bolster his players’ belief that they could write a thrilling and memorable final chapter to the season (sound familiar?).
“I told my guys, that’s the best I’ve seen Kentucky play all year long,” Pearl recalled saying.
His intent was to bolster belief. See the rout as a testament to Kentucky’s ability rather than an exposure of Auburn’s deficiencies.
“You got to believe there’s nobody you can’t beat,” Pearl said.
Toward that end, Pearl spoke to his players about playing and winning four games in the SEC Tournament. He did not lean on the one-game-at-a-time mantra.
“You’ve got to give them the road and the plan,” Pearl said. “They see it and then hopefully they buy in and they believe.”
After being routed at Kentucky, Auburn won its next 12 games: the final four of the regular season, four in the SEC Tournament and another four in an NCAA Tournament run to the Final Four that included a historic three-game sweep of college basketball titans Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky.
Yes, Pearl said, he believes in the power of momentum.
“You feel the wind is at your sails, honestly,” he said. “You have faith. You feel like God is going to carry you a little bit.”
While UK hopes a go-to guy emerges game to game, Arkansas rode Joe Johnson to four victories and the title in the 2000 SEC Tournament. He led the Razorbacks in scoring twice, in rebounding twice and in assists once.
“He was our all-star player,” Nolan Richardson recalled.
Richardson said he did not talk to his players about needing to win four games.
“All I talked about was how good we’re playing and how good we have to play,” he said. Of keeping the focus on the here and now, he added, “It’s like what have you done for me lately?”
Rick Stansbury led Mississippi State to four victories and the SEC Tournament title in 2009. He credited a lineup change as making a difference: He moved his point guard to power forward and gave the point guard duties to freshman Dee Bost.
“I made people adjust to us,” Stansbury said. “We were quick.”
When asked if he took pride in the accomplishment, he said, “Anytime you win a championship in any league, it’s very special. To do it in the SEC, one of the best leagues in America, and you do it four days in a row with zero McDonald’s All-Americans, very proud of it.”
Auburn was the first team to beat four teams en route to winning the SEC Tournament title. The Tigers did it in 1985. Sonny Smith, the coach then and now the analyst on radio broadcasts of Auburn games, credited slowing the pace of play in order to reserve energy. His team had a seven-player rotation.
Smith also saw momentum as an ally. “I think there’s a carryover,” he said. “Winning keeps the confidence going. Confidence will overcome fatigue.”
Richardson saw Kentucky as capable of winning four games in Nashville and joining the club.
“When they’re playing well and shooting the ball well, they’re probably just as good as anybody that they play,” the former Arkansas coach said.
Pearl agreed.
“They can do it because they’ve got depth,” the Auburn coach said of Kentucky.
While believing Kentucky has sufficient depth, Pearl also saw playing the first game each day in this year’s SEC Tournament working in UK’s favor.
“Longest rest” between games, Pearl said. “That’s a huge advantage.”
Thursday
No. 8 seed Kentucky vs. No. 9 seed Mississippi State
What: SEC Tournament second-round game
When: Noon EST
Where: Bridgestone Arena in Nashville
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: UK 9-15 (8-9 SEC); MSU 14-13 (8-10 SEC)
Series: UK leads 99-20
Last meeting: UK won 78-73 on Jan. 2 at Starkville, Miss.
SEC Tournament
At Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, Tenn.
All times Eastern
Wednesday
No. 12 Vanderbilt vs. No. 13 Texas A&M, (n)
Thursday
Noon: No. 8 Kentucky vs. No. 9 Mississippi State (SEC Network)
About 2:30 p.m.: No. 5 Florida vs. Vanderbilt-Texas A&M winner (SEC Network)
7 p.m.: No. 7 Missouri vs. No. 10 Georgia (SEC Network)
About 9:30 p.m.: No. 6 Mississippi vs. No. 11 South Carolina (SEC Network)
Friday
Noon: No. 1 Alabama vs. Kentucky or Mississippi State (ESPN)
About 2:30 p.m.: No. 4 Tennessee vs. Florida, Vanderbilt or Texas A&M (ESPN)
7 p.m.: No. 2 Arkansas vs. Georgia or Missouri (SEC Network)
About 9:30 p.m.: No. 3 LSU vs. South Carolina or Mississippi (SEC Network)
Saturday
1 and about 3:30 p.m.: Semifinal games (ESPN)
Sunday
1 p.m.: Championship game (ESPN)
This story was originally published March 10, 2021 at 12:41 PM.
