Devery Henderson with the winning TD catch. (LSU Athletics Photo)
It’s a game older Kentucky football fans will never forget for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it didn’t have as much at stake as Christian Laettner’s 1992 shot that enabled Duke to stun UK in the NCAA Tournament but the wrongly named “Bluegrass Miracle” in 2002 was just as heartbreaking to die-hard UK football fans.
Kentucky had a 30-27 lead over LSU and the Tigers had one final play from their own 26-yard line. Quarterback Marcus Randall threw it from his own 18 and Kentucky fans stormed the field around him with the ball still in the air and didn’t see the pass deflect off a Kentucky player at the UK 25. It went straight to LSU receiver Devery Henderson at the 15. He avoided a shoestring tackle to score the game-winning touchdown.
Before he scored, Kentucky quarterback Jared Lorenzen had dumped a cooler of Gatorade on head coach Guy Morriss. Many UK fans didn’t even know LSU had won and I remember some hanging on the goalposts thinking UK had won.
And do you remember who the LSU coach was? None other than Nick Saban, who will bring No. 8 Alabama to play at Kentucky Saturday.
“I remember we didn’t play very well,” Saban said this week when asked about the game. “I remember they poured Gatorade on the coach already. I remember there was about a 30-mile-an-hour wind that we had at our back. The guy threw the ball and it just kept going and going and going.”
The play won an ESPY for Play of the Year in 2003.
“Their guys misjudged the ball and tipped it,” Saban said .”Devery Henderson caught it, ran it for a touchdown so that’s basically what I remember.”
Give Saban credit. He admitted the win was a fluke after the game.
“Sometimes you gotta be a little lucky and I think that was our luck right here,” Saban said.
