The place was Atlanta, Georgia, in the 2008 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament. The tournament started out uneventfully, and nobody could have imagined what happened next.
A huge storm was brewing outside the Georgia Dome during the tournament’s first round. It wasn’t any storm; a tornado had touched down. Luckily, officials urged the crowd to remain in their seats. Otherwise, leaving the game would have put fans in harm’s way.
Documented by the conference in a documentary called Miracle 3, here’s how the SEC described the setting.
On March 14, 2008, Alabama found itself trailing Mississippi State 59-56 in the final seconds of the first quarterfinal game of the evening session. Crimson Tide guard Mykal Riley sank a desperation three-pointer as time expired, sending the game into overtime. That shot not only extended Alabama’s season for the moment, but it may have prevented thousands of fans from pouring into the city streets just as a tornado touched down outside the Georgia Dome a few minutes later.
But the Dome felt the effects of the weather. The building was damaged, and one of the main halls was flooded. The tournament couldn’t proceed there. Officials moved the tournament to Georgia Tech’s (then-named) Alexander Memorial Coliseum for the remaining rounds.
Most thought that the venue change and the circumstances surrounding it would be the end of the tumult. They were wrong.
The Georgia Bulldogs came into the tournament having lost five of their last six games, finishing the regular season last in the SEC East with a 4-12 record and an overall mark of 13-16.
The Dawgs then beat Ole Miss in OT at the Georgia Dome in the tournament’s opening round. While upsets happen, few thought that the win would be the first of a string of wins that would render the (so-called) “Dream Dawgs” a SEC Tournament championship. If that wasn’t enough, UGA faced the extremely rare task of playing two games in one day. First, they tipped off against Kentucky at noon on March 15 and beat the Wildcats by four in OT. At 8:30 that night, Mississippi State also fell by four, and that win put UGA in the title game against the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The Hogs went down by nine, and the now 17-16 Bulldogs claimed the ultimate prize, an NCAA automatic tournament bid. The winning streak didn’t last, though. Xavier beat UGA in the opening round, and the Bulldogs’ season was over.
That 2008 SEC basketball tournament will be forever lodged in the memory bank of the annals of conference and college basketball history.
