Tennessee Tennessee/Georgia Georgia Men's College Basketball recap on ESPN

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Saturday, Mar. 4 4:00pm ET
Tennessee lands East's No. 1 seed

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ATHENS, Ga. (AP) --Tennessee earned a share of its eighth Southeastern Conference championship with an 83-66 victory over Georgia on Saturday. There was no celebration, however.

"We beat Kentucky last year and cut down the nets," assistant coach Chris Ferguson said. "Then we went in the tank. We're not going that way this year."

"No time for celebrating," said Vincent Yarbrough, who led the Vols (No. 10 ESPN/USA Today, No. 11 AP) with 20 points, including four 3-pointers. "We still have a job to do -- the SEC tournament and the NCAAs. We'd love to have three rings."

The Vols will be sharing the title with three other teams, marking the first four-way championship tie in SEC history.

The Vols (24-5, 12-4 SEC) began pulling away toward the end of the first half and weren't troubled the rest of the way, taking advantage of the championship opportunity that came their way earlier in the day when Kentucky beat Florida 85-70.

Those three teams and LSU, a 64-60 winner over Ole Miss, enter next week's SEC tournament as champions. Tennessee has the No. 1 seed from the East and LSU in the West, with Kentucky seeded second in the East and Florida third, despite having the league's highest ranking.

"The way I understand it, not one of those trophies is going to have anything about 'co' on 'em," Vols coach Jerry Green said.

"It's a goal that we've had since we came here, so it gives us a great feeling of accomplishment," Green said. "When you look at those teams up there, I think we're 4-1 against them. I still think we can get a lot better."

Indeed, Tennessee beat Florida twice, split two with Kentucky and won its only game against LSU.

Ron Slay came off the bench to add 17 points and Tony Harris had 15 for the Vols, who have won six of their last eight games.

D.A. Layne had 19 points for Georgia (10-19, 3-13), Anthony Evans added 11 and Shon Coleman 10. It was the fifth loss in a row for the Bulldogs and 10th in 11 games.

"They're a long-armed, athletic team," Georgia coach Jim Harrick said of the Vols. "On any given night they can beat any team in the country. We played hard, but when we came out in the second half, I felt like our guys thought we were beaten."

Georgia stayed with the Vols the first 12 minutes, lodged in a 25-all tie before Terrence Woods put Tennessee ahead to stay with a steal and driving layup with 8:53 left in the half.

The Vols stretched the lead to 50-38 at halftime and opened the second half with a 10-2 run.

Tennessee's biggest lead came at 75-47 on a driving layup by Harris Walker with 9:46 to play. Georgia then went on a 15-4 run, but it only cut the lead to 17 points with just under five minutes to play.