ATLANTA — Officials from the SEC, the Georgia Dome and the universities of Kentucky and Georgia were meeting into the wee hours of this morning discussing how to rearrange the SEC tournament schedule after a tornado struck the Dome.

The SEC postponed Friday night’s game between Georgia and Kentucky after radar showed two more potential storm cells entering the Atlanta area. Georgia Dome officials said the facility was not safe enough to continue playing basketball.

Massive pieces of siding fell off the Dome after the storm struck at about 9:39 p.m. during the Alabama-Mississippi State game. Play resumed after an hour and Mississippi State won in overtime.

One option is forcing the winner of the Georgia-Kentucky game to play twice today.

“Ideally, we’d like to see the NCAA accommodate us and extend the SEC tournament until Monday,” Georgia coach Dennis Felton said just after midnight. “We need to find a way to fit this in and still secure the SEC’s automatic bid. That’s what I would like to see them do.

“Obviously, it’s not very fair for a team to have to play two games in one day. That would put incredible stress on us.”

But SEC spokesman Charles Bloom said extending the tournament until Monday was an unlikely option because of the NCAA’s selection show Sunday night. And the Georgia Dome isn’t guaranteed to be deemed safe today, which might force the SEC to move the tournament to another venue.

That would present tremendous logistical problems for the tournament, since no other facility can hold 26,000 fans and all the assembled media. Bloom said canceling the tournament was a “last, worst-case scenario.”

“The goal is to finish with a champion,” Bloom said. “We might have to play two games on Sunday. We might have to play somewhere else. We’re working through all of that.”

Bloom said Raycom, also represented in the meeting, was willing to be flexible and CBS had a representative on the phone. Athletic directors from Tennessee, Mississippi State and Arkansas — the three other schools remaining in the tournament — were being updated by telephone.

“I know it’s a maze of issues that have to be figured out,” Felton said. “There’s nothing easy about it.”

Updates will be posted on www.secsports.com

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