ATLANTA — Well, it’s time for my favorite SEC tournament game, the second annual “How Long Can Dave Go?”

South Carolina coach Dave Odom is a communicator. He’s the kind of guy that, if you were on the phone with him, you would remove the phone from your ear, point to it and smile at a friend while shaking your head. You wouldn’t roll your eyes, because he’s at least interesting. But you would note that, yes, he’s still talking.

And Odom proved he would take full of advantage in his last SEC tournament by launching into a 366-word opening statement after the 77-73 win over LSU when most coaches simply congratulate the other team. He broke the 300-word mark two more times during his news conference.

I thought about asking Odom about his top 20 basketball memories and then slipping away to the buffet just to be funny, but then I realized that’s where all of the sports writers were, anyway.

I told Zam Fredrick about Odom’s news-conference adventures, and the South Carolina guard laughed.

“Oh, yeah, he’s going to let you know how he feels and give you at least two examples about whatever you’re talking about,” Fredrick said. “Sometimes it doesn’t even apply.

“But maybe later on, you think about it and it’ll hit you like, ‘Oh, now I understand what he was saying.’ He’s an excellent speaker.”

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Fredrick told me about a really neat ceremony his team participated in before the game called “pass the rock.” One player takes a basketball and hands it to someone else, then talks about that person in front of the team.

“You tell somebody how you feel about them and how important they are to the team and to you as an individual and how much you love them, basically,” he said. “Then that person passes it to someone else until everybody gets a turn.”

I thought that was a great idea. So I grabbed a basketball and looked for Mark Wiedmer, so I could tell him how much I admired his hard work, but he wasn’t at the arena yet.

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Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings jokingly said Shan Foster was an “all right” singer, then discussed the entire music scene in Nashville.

“Even the street musicians are good,” Stallings said after his team beat Auburn. “You hear them and you’re thinking, ‘How do they not have a recording contract?’ They’re terrific. That’s one of the best things about Nashville!”

I don’t think you’ll see that quote in the Nashville Visitors Bureau brochure.

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If you had “3:28 p.m.” in the pool for “First E-mail Reminding Darren He Picked LSU To Reach The Semifinals,” you are a winner. Thank you, alert reader Daryl Fagan.

To make myself feel better, I’m going to include one of Stallings’ comments from Wednesday.

“Nobody wants to play LSU,” he said.

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After LSU star freshman Anthony Randolph glided from the right side of the paint and dunked late in the loss, I couldn’t help but think, “That’s the last thing we’ll see him do in college.”

But include South Carolina’s Mike Holmes among the people who think the slender Randolph might not be ready for the NBA.

“He’s a good player, but weight-wise he’s got to get a little stronger,” Holmes said. “But he’s got long length.

“He’s a good player and all, but I think I did a good job on him just boxing him out. It ain’t that hard to box him out. It was pretty much easy to me because I’m physical.”

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Alabama took a 30-5 lead against — let’s go ahead and say it — NIT-bound Florida. And NCAA committee members gladly changed the channel to a more HD-friendly network.

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