Georgia coach Dennis Felton isn't a very mushy guy and he wasn't necessarily teary-eyed about the Bulldogs' incredible run to the SEC tournament title in these last drama-filled four days.

But when talk Sunday turned to his two senior co-captains, Dave Bliss and Sundiata Gaines, he found himself choking on emotion.

Rich Addicks/Staff (ENLARGE)

Georgia celebrates its SEC tournament victory over Arkansas at Georgia Tech's Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Sundiata Gaines (red jersey) was named tournament MVP.

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"I have incredible feeling for them because they did so much, they persevered so much, to get to it just in the nick of time," said Felton, after the Bulldogs' 66-57 win over Arkansas put them in the NCAA tournament. "You literally can't achieve it any later than they did. I'm incredibly happy for them. I can't put it into words how happy I am for those two guys in particular."

That SEC tournament trophy was nice, but the NCAA tournament bid that came with it was even sweeter. With the automatic bid that goes to the tournament champion, Georgia was named the 14th seed in the West Regional and will face third-seeded Xavier (27-6) Thursday in Washington.

"It probably won't sink in until we get there," said Gaines, teary-eyed as he clutched his tournament MVP trophy. "This was our last chance and that's all I ever asked for, just a chance."

The 14th seed was the worst ever bestowed upon an SEC tournament or overall league champion. Kentucky received a 12 in 1985. But nobody seemed to care.

"To be honest it doesn't really matter," Bliss said. "We're just glad to be in it."

The Bulldogs survived a tornado, which postponed their second-round game and forced them to play two games on Saturday, and a retooled format that forced them to play three games in two days. They survived two overtime games and all four were two-possession contests in the last two minutes. They became just the third team in SEC history to win four games in four days.

Even getting to the arena Sunday proved dramatic. Their driver had a heart attack while the bus was being loaded at the Marriott Atlanta Marquis. He was rushed to Grady Hospital and survived.

And so did the Bulldogs.

"This is absolutely the tops," said Felton, who won his fourth tournament championship but his first in five years at Georgia. "To do this, having to win two games in one day and three games in two days, this is more miraculous than anything I've done as an assistant or a head coach.

"I don't know if I've ever experienced anything that was so daunting and yet so successful."

Georgia came in as the last-place team in the Eastern Division with the worst record in the SEC (13-16). It leaves with the worst record (17-16) of a tournament champion.

The Bulldogs entered with a roster of eight scholarship players, where most of their opponents countered with a full complement of 13. But they played as if none of it mattered.

• Terrance Woodbury, who couldn't shoot most of the season, was named to the all-tournament team after scoring 65 points in four days, including a team-best 16 on Sunday.

• Bliss, a rebounding machine all week, had 11 in the finals.

• Albert Jackson found a hook shot that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would envy.

• Freshman point guard Zac Swansey twice left the bench to fill in for a fouled-out Gaines and assumed the role of hero.

The participants say there was nothing supernatural about what occurred in Atlanta this weekend.

The players said the biggest thing was climbing over the mountain of doubt that was before them.

"If we wouldn't have believed in ourselves we never would've had a chance," Gaines said. "But we believed in ourselves when nobody else did. We went through all the adversity, played two games in a day, did all that, that all just makes it special."

"We came in here with nothing to lose and that's what we're taking to the next opponent," said junior guard Billy Humphrey. "This is America, that's a perfect way to describe it."

Humphrey did much to ensure the Bulldogs would secure the championship. They had led from the opening, even by as much as 19 points, but that had been reduced to a precarious three points inside the game's last three minutes.

But after a Jackson dunk stretched the margin to five, Humphrey delivered a 19-foot dagger with a 3-pointer that made it 61-53 with

1:34 remaining. Humphrey swished the game's final two free throws among a chorus of "UGA, UGA" chants from wildly celebrating Georgia fans filling one half of the less-than-half-filled arena.

"The stars aligned, the tornadoes aligned and the Dogs walked through the middle to the Promised Land!" yelled longtime Georgia basketball fan Jesse Kenney.

Yes, bizarre indeed.