NASHVILLE — Thirty-six years and one week. That’s how long it’s been since the University of Tennessee last won the Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament.
That’s how much time has passed since longtime Vols radio network color analyst Bert Bertelkamp, a much-used junior guard on that team, experienced, “The highlight of my playing career.”
Thirty-six years and one week. It may be the most frustrating and confounding fact in UT’s long and largely frustrating and confounding men’s hoops history.
After all, we’ve held nine presidential elections since that rainy March 5, 1979, Saturday night inside the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center. We watched Three Mile Island melt down 23 days after that 75-69 overtime victory over then-defending national champ Kentucky, seen the league expand to 14 schools and watched each of the SEC’s 10 member schools in 1979 win at least one SEC tourney since then. At least every one but Tennessee.
“It is kind of hard to believe,” said Bertelkamp, who’ll begin analyzing the current Vols’ chances to win this year’s SEC tourney when UT tips it off against Vanderbilt at 7 tonight EDT inside the Bridgestone Arena.