A tornado and an improbable performance by Georgia created a ripple effect that brought another layer of drama to an event that produces plenty of it each March.
Winners of only four SEC regular-season men’s basketball games, the Bulldogs completed a stunning conference tournament run Sunday to earn the league’s automatic NCAA tournament bid after winning three games in a span of 30 hours.
That unlikely scenario — coupled with the late outcomes of other conference championship games — forced the NCAA tournament selection committee to consider eight different contingency plans with the bracket and kicked March Madness off on a promising note.
“In all honesty, it was such an unusual situation that it put us in a little bit of a time crunch,” said NCAA selection committee chairman Tom O’Connor, whose group finalized the bracket 20 minutes before the nationally televised selection show. “It was a little bit more stressful for us, but we were prepared.”
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