SEC event still has area flavor

The Southeastern Conference women's basketball tournament tips off Thursday and will contain some Chattanooga-area flavor with Mississippi State coach Sharon Fanning-Otis, Georgia senior point guard Ashley Houts and Kentucky junior guard Carly Morrow.

It also marks the 10-year anniversary of the event being held in Chattanooga for a seventh and final time.

McKenzie Arena nurtured the tournament from 1993 until its departure in 2000, when the facility's roughly 3,900 lower-level seats weren't enough to meet league needs. Once the SEC left for Memphis in 2001, Nashville in '02 and Little Rock in '03, the Greater Chattanooga Sports & Events Committee never bid again.

"The league wasn't able to give its teams enough lower-level seats per team and leave any for local sales," Sports Committee president Scott Smith said Tuesday, "so that obviously was a concern for us as well as them. So many of Tennessee's die-hard fans are elderly, and they would ask for this huge amount of handicapped seats or needed to be on the last row of the gold circle and those sort of things."

The SEC now bounces its women's tournament over Chattanooga every year, with the next five events booked for the Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Ga., and Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. The Gwinnett Center, which houses the tournament this week and again in 2013-14, opened in 2003 and is configured to seat as many as 12,750 for basketball and has 36 corporate suites.

Bridgestone Arena, known formerly as Sommet Center and the Gaylord Entertainment Center, opened in 1996 and is configured to hold 19,395 for basketball. It has hosted three SEC women's tournaments and will do so again in 2011-12.

"Duluth and Nashville are two areas where there is tremendous support and interest in the women's game, particularly the SEC women's game," Florida coach Amanda Butler said. "I think they are two great sites."

The SEC tournament set four-day attendance records almost annually in Chattanooga, peaking at 43,221 in '99. The semifinals sold out that year, resulting in the unthinkable for an event that once rotated among campus sites that were moderately interested.

Little Rock barely broke Chattanooga's record in '03 with 43,642, and Nashville blistered Little Rock's mark two years ago with 51,036.

"Being from there, I always liked playing in Chattanooga, but Nashville and Duluth have done a great job," said Fanning-Otis, who played and coached at UTC. "In the end, I'm for anything that advances our game."

Fanning-Otis has directed the Lady Bulldogs to all five of their NCAA tournament trips, and they are the third seed in this year's SEC field after going 18-11 overall and 9-7 in league play during the regular season. Kentucky (23-6, 11-5) is the second seed after setting a program-record for league wins but hasn't reached the title game since winning the event in 1982.

The 5-foot-11 Morrow, who played at GPS, averages six points a game and has compiled 33 made 3-pointers, 30 assists and 30 steals.

"Carly has had a tremendous year for us," UK coach Matthew Mitchell said. "For most of the conference season, when we got in a tight spot and needed a big shot, she was able to make those. Her improvement on the defensive end really led to us being able to play some of the best pressure defense that the conference has seen this season."

Alabama 5-10 junior guard Alyson Butler (4.8 ppg) played at Walker Valley, and Mississippi State 6-3 sophomore center/forward Danielle Rector (1.4 ppg) played at Tennessee Temple Academy. Yet the most recognized Chattanooga-area player in Duluth will be Houts, the 5-6 former Dade County standout who leads Georgia with 12.3 points per game, 110 assists and 61 steals.

Houts led the Lady Bulldogs (22-7, 9-7) to an 18-1 start before suffering two ankle setbacks that left her limited until this past week.

"The thing that she missed was explosion off of that foot," Georgia coach Andy Landers said. "It was totally gone for a month. She was still quick and could still go and she could still get by you, but she's back now to exploding past you."