Storm creates big hassles at SEC tournament
The setting resembled a Pee Wee league game, with seats reserved for family and friends. Most everyone else headed for home while a Southeastern Conference tournament like no other ad-libbed its way through the weekend, trying to pick up the pieces from a devastating storm.
There was a new venue – the cozy arena on Georgia Tech’s campus, rather than the spacious Georgia Dome. There was a hastily arranged schedule – yep, Georgia actually had to play a doubleheader Saturday, something most of the Bulldogs hadn’t done since their AAU days.
“Chaotic” was the way Kentucky star Ramel Bradley described it, and that was certainly as good a word as any.
Friday night, a powerful tornado tore through downtown Atlanta, causing the thick fabric roof of the Georgia Dome to flap like a flag in a stiff breeze. Small chunks of debris, from bolts to insulation, fell from the towering ceiling. Large strips of metal siding and insulation were ripped away from outer shell of the 70,000-seat stadium, which was pocked with gaping holes in the light of a new day.
With the dome judged unsafe, the SEC decided to move the final four tournament games to 9,191-seat Alexander Memorial Coliseum, only 2 miles away but far enough to have avoided the wrath of the storm. There was no way to accommodate all of the 20,000 or so fans who had tickets, so the league decided to keep everyone out except a bare-bones crew: media, support staff, bands, cheerleaders, family and friends of the teams.
When Georgia and Kentucky took the court at noon Saturday for the last of the quarterfinal games, one that was supposed to be played Friday night, there were only 1,458 people in the stands. Georgia upset the Wildcats 60-56 in overtime, but the only thing the Bulldogs got for their trouble was another game about six hours later.
They used it as motivation, turning the grueling schedule into an us-against-the-world mentality. It worked against Kentucky. It worked against Mississippi State by an identical margin, 64-60.
In one day, the Bulldogs won half as many SEC games as they won during the entire regular season.
“A lot of things didn’t go our way this year,” Bliss said. “But we were not going to quit.”
But hardly anyone got to see Georgia’s amazing double.
Fns wondered why they were shut out of the tournament, especially when there were entire sections of empty seats at the replacement arena.
“There’s not an easy way to get this done, but we feel like the amount of people that traveled this far and paid this much money, it’s disappointing for the fans,” said Brad Hughes, a Kentucky rooter.
“It’s going to be like a Pee Wee league game because they’re going to be playing in front of their parents and their closest friends.”
SEC officials said they had no choice but to bar most fans from attending. They were told there might not be enough police officers to provide full security at the remaining games in view of the massive damage in downtown Atlanta. Also, the league worried about opening up the coliseum to general-admission seating and having far more fans converge on the building than could possibly get in.
“I understand the frustration,” SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom said. “But we were forced into this by a situation that doesn’t come around very often.”
Not very often, indeed. Go all the way back to 1989, when the ECAC North Atlantic Conference tournament banned fans because of a measles outbreak.
Friars fire Welsh
Tim Welsh was fired as Providence’s coach after his third losing season in four years for the Rhode Island school.
He spent 10 years at the Big East school and had one year left on his contract.
“He represented the college with dignity and class,” athletic director Bob Driscoll said. “However, I felt that it was in the best interest of the program and Providence College to make a change in leadership.”
His team went 15-16 this season. The Friars lost to West Virginia 58-53 in the opening round of the Big East tournament Wednesday, dropping their record under Welsh in that event to 1-9.