Throwback Thursday: 1983 SEC Men's Basketball Tournament
Alabama wasn't supposed to make much noise in the 1983 SEC Tournament, which was played in nearby Birmingham.
Instead, the Crimson Tide helped spark a remarkable run that helped another league program reach the Final Four.
Alabama the was reigning SEC Tournament champion after upsetting Kentucky the previous year in Rupp Arena, 48-46, but it hadn't quite been able to rekindle that magic during the 1982-83 season.
After being ranked No. 12 in the preseason Associated Press poll, Wimp Sanderson's team finished the regular season 20-12 overall, but just 8-10 in league play. That placed it ninth in the 10-team field. Only Florida (13-18 overall, 5-13 SEC) was seeded lower.
The way the brackets were set up, it meant an extra game against Auburn, which was also 8-10, for the chance to play in the quarterfinals.
Just four days after the rivals faced each other at Coleman Coliseum (the Crimson Tide won 86-78 to split the season home-and-home series), Alabama opened the tournament at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex with a 62-61 victory.
Sophomore center Bobby Lee Hurt led Alabama with 17 points and nine rebounds.
Next up, No. 10 Kentucky (23-8, 13-5), the regular-season champion, would have a chance to exact some revenge for the previous SEC Tournament. Only Alabama won another nail-bitter, this time 69-64.
Sophomore guard Ennis Whatley led all Crimson Tide scorers with 21 points.
Playing its third game in as many days, Alabama defeated another team it had faced late in the regular season, Mississippi State, 51-50. Whatley again topped the scoring with 17 points as Alabama advanced to the unlikely championship game against Georgia.
Whatley scored 20 in the finals, but Alabama came up short, 86-71. The Bulldogs shot a remarkable 85 percent from the field (22 of 26) in the second half.
Not only was it Georgia's first SEC tournament championship, but the Bulldogs secured the league's automatic bid to the 1983 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament (Alabama landed an invitation, only to lose in the first round).
By winning its conference title, Georgia was seeded No. 4 in the East bracket, which was big as the top four seeds in each region received a first-round bye. The Bulldogs survived a tough 56-54 matchup with No. 5 seed Virginia Commonwealth, and then got hot.
The year following Dominique Wilkins' departure to the NBA, Georgia bounced top-seeded St. John's and North Carolina (with a young Michael Jordan), before getting bounced in the Final Four, 67-60. The opponent subsequently pulled off one of the biggest upsets in March Madness history, Jim Valvano's North Carolina State Wolfpack.
