I love March. It’s right up there with the entire college football season as two of my most favorite sporting events. Even during Tennessee’s irrelevant years I loved the whole deal – from the early small conference tournaments through the big conference tournament weekends to of course the NCAA Tournament.

My hometown Memphis hasn’t hosted any tournament rounds since a First Round in 2001 (12- and 13-seeds – Gonzaga and Indiana State – had first round upsets I saw and defending champ Michigan State was the 1-seed). I had seen Tennessee beat UL-Lafayette in the First Round the year before in Birmingham (the Sweet 16 team that ended with a loss-that-probably-shouldn’t-have-been to 8-seed North Carolina), but had not seen any part of ANY live March basketball since then until the frustrating, dejecting loss to LSU in the First Round of last year’s SEC Tournament.

Let’s face it, Tennessee has had absolutely ZERO success in two areas that pertain to the following story: (1) the freakin’ Georgia Dome and (2) the SEC Tournament.

Since the National Championship Rose Bowl-shattering loss to Matt Mauck and LSU in the 2001 football Title Game started it all, there’s been: the two Peach Bowl embarrassments with Maryland (didn’t think it would be that bad) and Clemson (how we fell to the Peach Bowl at #6 I’ll never know), the 2004 SECCG loss to Auburn (with awful officiating), the Tournament loss to a bad LSU team last year, and of course the recent SECCG loss to LSU in December that I still hurts when it’s mentioned.

It pains me to even use this picture…tough night

Add in Tennessee’s illustrious history in the SEC Tournament – not even getting past the quarterfinals since 1991, and I didn’t even know it was THAT bad – and you pretty much have a recipe for another disappointing loss.

I witnessed last year’s frustrating first round SEC loss to LSU, the last-place team in the the West, and Glen “Big Baby” Davis

So naturally coming off a regular season SEC title with only three losses the whole year, I figured I would make it down there to perhaps see us break those two bad strings of fortune – if any team was going to do it, might as well be the best team in school history (so far at least), right? I wanted another championship shirt to make up for the one in December I all but had.

Going into that Friday morning, the thought was there is no way a team – South Carolina – that we had just destroyed the Sunday before by about 30 points could possibly beat us. We even hammered them in Columbia, how would they have any advantage at a neutral site? Oh yeah, it’s the SEC Tournament in the Georgia Dome, that’s how. It would have been a foregone conclusion if not for that little bit.

I gotta admit, I had some anxiety. Then Tennessee’s warming up sporting some new black Adidas shoes. The superstitious one I am wonders why?! why are we changing shoes NOW? We get our trophy that we should have been given in Knoxville and there’s a pretty good chance in my mind that we’re completely going to overlook Carolina, whose playing for the retiring coach Dave Odom. Oh, and Carolina made a run to the Final a couple years ago when they beat us in the same exact matchup with Tennessee as the East champion.

We started off pretty well, but they didn’t go away. I don’t really remember much of the actual game really. It was a fight thoughout, and I was getting frustrated that we weren’t playing like we wanted to win the game. I know Wayne Chism came to play that day and he pretty much kept us in the game. I also know that SC had NO answers for us – we could and were scoring at will – but we were playing bad, bad defense.

Wayne Chism grabbed 7 boards and blocked 5 shots to go along with his team-high 23 points against South Carolina

Final minute, they take the lead, Tyler Smith gets it right back, but they score again. Uh oh, here’s another disappointment, another feeling of defeat leaving this stupid Dome…

…Chris Lofton gives Tennessee the lead and I jumped almost into the row in front of me. Then from my angle behind the basket Devon Downey’s game-winning attempt…crap, it’s going in as it leaves his hand, it’s off and Tyler gets away with a huge shove on the rebound. They have one last chance but don’t get a shot off – pure relief. I didn’t care that we scratched by, Tennessee had won something in the Georgia Dome AND had made Saturday in the Tournament.

Arkansas manages to beat Memorial Magic-less Vandy and we leave to get some food before the night session. Mid-first half of Bama-Mississippi State we return, and I’m just looking forward to quality SEC hoops and Kentucky losing (and booking NIT home games) in the last game. This game turned out to be great. Mykal Riley hits this incredible shot…

…and we’re playing OT. They’re playing a back-and-forth, entertaining game, and at 2:11 of OT, all of the sudden the tarp roof of the Dome begins shaking loudly, as if about 20 helicopters were flying right over the top of it.

People are wondering what’s going on, and then large, heavy metal structures hanging from the ceiling begin swaying, and the big screen in the corner is really moving ALOT, and then people panic and start making way to get out of there. The helicopters sound like a train now. We just remain there amidst all of this, and I’m wondering what in the world I just experienced. Here’s what those watching the game saw on TV.

The PA guy announces the severe weather in the area and says for everyone to stay in the building for their own safety. My dad tells me it was a tornado, but there was NO threat of severe weather from the local news I had watched that morning. And how many times do you see tornadoes go through metropolitan downtown cities? Never.

Uh, WOW

I’m not really scared, just beginning to worry and praying to myself. Had our hotel been hit? What about the parking garage where my car was? I figured the Dome wasn’t going to collapse, but there was still the thought it could have. It was so unexpected and I wasn’t ready for it.

I was getting texts from a couple friends of mine, but of course you couldn’t get any calls or messages made amidst everyone. There were about 20K there, too – the large UK contingent, Tennessee and Arkansas had won, and State brings quite a bit too. It seemed like forever waiting to see if the game was going to finish the last two minutes, but nobody was leaving because they weren’t allowed to.

My mom had called our hotel and relayed to us that the hotel had received no damage, so that was reassuring. It was just a crazy whole ordeal inside that Dome, that, after all the time I had hated it because Tennessee sucked there, more or less been a shelter against an F2 tornado. So thank you, Georgia Dome, and thank you, Mykal Riley, for that shot that saved who knows how many lives. We weren’t going to leave, but many would have, and would have been outside for the tornado. Amazing.

Who knows how many fans would have left the Georgia Dome had Mykal Riley not sent the Alabama-Mississippi State into OT

State finally held off Bama, but it was gonna be near midnight before the next game got underway. I got a text telling me the SEC had decided to postpone the UK-UGA game just before they announced it at the Dome, so we beat the crowd out. What we saw in the mile or so walk back to our hotel was nothing short of incredible – unlike anything I had ever seen: metal from the Dome siding in the ground, metal barriers inside buildings, glass shattered in the Congress Center next door and the CNN Center and Philips Arena, building insulation everywhere, shattered windows in hotels, bricks and all sorts of debris and blown-down billboards in Centennial Olympic Park, just incredible, incredible damage.

Some photos of the tornado’s damage…I should have had my own (see the next paragraph)…

Here’s some irony too: we stopped by our room after we ate between sessions, and I had taken my camera to the Tennessee game. My dad asked if I was going to take it for the night games, and I said that I had no reason to, so I left it in the room. If only I had kept it, I would have had video and pictures from the walk back through the war-zone. We stayed up a couple more hours to see what the SEC’s plan was – hey, we actually had a team to see.

Once they decided to move it to Georgia Tech and let a select few in, we decided to just head back home. As we’re checking out, I get interviewed for a Knoxville-News Sentinel article by Mike Griffith on the fans’ view of the whole situation. We left early enough that we would make it back to Memphis in time to watch us play Arkansas, but that drive featured a call just as we got the Birmingham telling us that we could get into the game if we so desired. Weary from school and the night before, I made the executive decision to go to Memphis.

The scene was just weird. It’s former SEC member Georgia Tech’s odd, tiny gym, with like a few hundred people there. Looking back, it probably would have been really fun to have been there for that game just because of the atmosphere and situation.

Otherwise, all I remember – why I included the YouTube of the ESPN highlights below – from that game was Tyler (and Wayne) dunking (trying to dunk) on softee center Steven Hill, JaJuan talking trash to Arkansas coach John Pelphrey, and Arkansas hitting pretty much every shot they took in playing their best game of the year.

Hill, who has worse offensive skills than, say Jake Tsakalidis or Ben Wallace, then hits this completely lucky, crap prayer of a shot over Chism and Lofton comes up short and we lose. I’m pissed, but trying to keep it cool (in the same room with my mom), so all I can do is throw a pillow over my head into the air while yelling, “Just throw it up Arkansas, it’ll go in, even Steven Hill has it going” or something silly like that.

I knew at that point we weren’t getting the 1-seed every aspect of our profile deserved – the RPI, the SOS, the SEC title, the road wins. It sucked. Of course Arkansas then goes out and sucks against Georgia in building a nice deficit and losing. No doubt in my mind that we blow Georgia out of Atlanta if we get by Arkansas and our top seed then could have in no way been denied. For me Steven Hill joins Matt Mauck and some Michigan DB (C****** W******) in a category of those that will be hated forever in Tennessee history.

Steven Hill, you SUCK!

Oh yeah, all this sports-generated emotion the day after the night I could have died. An experience that I will never, ever forget.