SI

Kentucky Pulls Off the Heist of the Year With a Last-Second TD to Beat Missouri

How did the Wildcats win this game? How did Missouri lose this game? Either way, it'll be Kentucky vs. Georgia for the SEC East crown.

Ross Dellenger

Kentucky Pulls Off the Heist of the Year With a Last-Second TD to Beat Missouri
Kentucky Pulls Off the Heist of the Year With a Last-Second TD to Beat Missouri /

Kentucky still completely controls its chances of winning the SEC East title—somehow.

The Wildcats won a wild one at Missouri on Saturday, 15–14, scoring on an untimed down from the two-yard line on a pass from quarterback Terry Wilson to tight end C.J. Conrad to come away from a completely baffling affair with their share of first place in the division intact. We’ll get to all the craziness later. Let’s talk about this wacky SEC East for just a second. The Wildcats are now 7–1 and 5–1 in the league and will win the division if they knock off Georgia (7–1, 5–1) next week in Lexington. Mark Stoops’s team already has a win over Florida, which lost to Georgia on Saturday afternoon to put it behind both teams in the event of a three-way tie at two losses.

It’s shaping up to be quite a day on CBS next weekend. Georgia-Kentucky will be the afternoon kickoff in a doubleheader that concludes with No. 4 LSU hosting No. 1 Alabama.

And now back to that game in Columbia, Mo., which the Wildcats had no business winning for most of the day. Wilson completed six passes for 87 yards on the game-winning 81-yard drive (he was sacked twice), awakening UK’s struggling passing offense at just the right moment. The Wildcats scored one offensive touchdown, shuffled through their backup quarterbacks and trailed 14–3 before a 67-yard punt return for a score by Lynn Bowden Jr. with 5:18 left in the fourth quarter. Before that game-winning march, UK’s second-half drives went as follows: punt, punt, punt, punt, turnover on downs.

Then came that final drive. Missouri busted a couple of secondary coverages and brought a jailbreak blitz on two plays—including the game-winning completion—leaving receivers open.

Serious drama engulfed the final two plays of the game. With one chance from the Missouri 10-yard line, Wilson’s pass for Ahmad Wagner fell incomplete in the corner of the end zone as time expired, but out came a—very questionable—pass interference flag on Tigers corner Demarkus Acy. The Wildcats got one last untimed down from the two-yard line, and Wilson, against a blitz, hit his 255-pound tight end on a simple out route to the pylon.

That all sets up next weekend’s ratings bonanza for CBS, when the SEC East and SEC West leads will be on the line.

Published
Ross Dellenger
ROSS DELLENGER

Ross Dellenger received his Bachelor of Arts in Communication with a concentration in Journalism December 2006. Dellenger, a native of Morgan City, La., currently resides in Washington D.C. He serves as a Senior Writer covering national college football for Sports Illustrated.

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