Mark WiedmerIt might go down as the least expected "almost" moment in University of Tennessee men's basketball history. Emphasis on "almost," of course.
It happened at the 1991 Southeastern Conference tournament at Vanderbilt's venerable Memorial Gym. Entering that event with nine victories overall that season and only three wins in 18 SEC games, the Volunteers nevertheless almost shocked the world. Almost.
"All year we'd been losing because we were still trying to find each other, trying to come together as a team," said current Chattanooga State coach and former Brainerd High School star Jay Price, who was a junior point guard that season. "Once we figured it out, we were still losing, but we were losing tough games."
A case in point had been the regular-season finale at Alabama. Against the No. 24 Crimson Tide, inside the Plaid Palace that coach Wimp Sanderson had turned into a house of horrors for visitors, the Vols had stubbornly fallen 96-88.
"The biggest thing we'd learned," said Price, "was just to play hard."
Yet when the Vols' first SEC tourney game began on March 7, 1991, against Ole Miss - the same Rebels who had beaten them by five points nine days earlier in Knoxville - no one thought playing hard would save them. Three of the Vols' five previous SEC tourneys had been one-and-done affairs, and no Tennessee team since 1979 had won the event.
Yet a funny thing happened that first game at Vanderbilt. The Vols whipped Ole Miss by nine points. Then they crushed No. 18 Mississippi State by 17 the following day. Then on Saturday afternoon, they buried Georgia by 20 in the tourney semifinals.
Suddenly, this woeful Wade Houston-coached team had turned to wonderful. Suddenly, shockingly, the Big Orange stood on the threshold of earning the SEC's automatic NCAA tournament bid, despite having won but 12 games all season.
Suddenly, Price said as he recalled that wild weekend on the West End, "If you get to the championship game, you tell yourself anything can happen."
Price already knew what could happen. He knew you could win a championship in Memorial Gym because he'd won a state title with Brainerd at Memorial in 1988.
"I started feeling the same magic I'd felt in high school in that building," he said, knowing well that Vandy fans have always believed in "Memorial Magic," at least where their Commodores are concerned.
But Price also felt something else on that Saturday night heading into Sunday's final.
"We were tired," he recalled. "Emotionally drained as well as physically drained. We'd fought so hard every game. It takes its toll. I remember feeling it in my legs. Your speed and quickness just aren't there. And once those legs go, it's tough to make shots."
Without those fresh legs in the final against Alabama, Tennessee lost. Big. The Tide prevailed 88-69 despite the best efforts of Price, Carlus Groves and Allan Houston, who led all players in that tourney by scoring 98 points. (That remains a record for the stretch since the tourney returned from a 25-year absence in 1979).
So what does that tournament have to do with this one, which begins for the Vols at 1 p.m. Eastern today against Georgia inside Nashville's Bridgestone Arena?
Much like that 1990-91 team, these Vols must win four games in four days to be crowned the champs and earn an automatic NCAA bid. Also just like that squad, there have been some tough losses that might have been wins - most notably the Georgia game in Knoxville and defeats at Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
"I don't get to see them every game because I'm coaching," Price said. "But they play hard and have some good young talent. It just seems like one of those years when nothing fell into place."
But because his Vols almost fell into the NCAA tournament by getting hot at the right moment, Price also thinks he knows a good recipe for these Vols to make significant string music in Music City.
"First, the pressure is off," he said. "Everyone thinks you'll lose and go home. Coach Houston told us to play free. All season the offense had gone through Allan. In the tournament he told us, ''Take what the defense gives you. If you're open, shoot it.' And we did a better job of concentrating on the little things. Loose balls. Boxing out. Free throws."
One other thing happened that Price said could definitely happen again.
"The crowd loves an underdog," he said. "They see a team that's supposed to lose really fighting hard to win, and they start rooting for them. You feel that. It seemed like everybody got behind us after a game or two."
Let these Vols take out Georgia today, then Kentucky and its monstrous Big Blue Nation on Friday, and it is highly probable that Bridgestone would become a sea of pale orange thereafter.
That doesn't mean this team will win what Price's team couldn't. Four games in four days is still four games in four days. And should they falter on that fourth day, Price expects they'll feel the same way 26 years from now that he and his teammates do today.
"We still talk about that tournament," he said. "And it still hurts. We could have done something special."
Given that only two other Tennessee teams have reached an SEC tourney final (1979 and 2009) and only the '79 team won the event, that '91 team did do something special. Just not quite special enough to qualify as March Magic.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.