Lynn Bowden’s zany Belk Bowl: From a thrown punch to knocking out Virginia Tech
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Game day: Kentucky defeats Virginia Tech in Belk Bowl
Click below to read all of the coverage from the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com after the University of Kentucky’s 37-30 victory over Virginia Tech in the Belk Bowl at Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday.
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For his farewell performance in Kentucky Wildcats blue and white, Lynn Bowden produced something zany, sublime and unforgettable.
The UK “wide receiver playing quarterback” started the pregrame warm-ups for Kentucky’s Belk Bowl showdown with Virginia Tech as a featured participant in a pregame skirmish. Video captured by ESPN showed Bowden throwing a punch.
By the time the game was over, Bowden had produced one of the most memorable individual performances ever turned in by a Kentucky football player. It was a showing so epic and so clutch, it moved one UK assistant to proclaim Bowden the best player in school history.
In a finish that Kentucky football backers will never cease to savor, Bowden hit Joshua Ali with a 13-yard touchdown pass with 15 seconds remaining in the game to rally Kentucky from 30-24 behind into a 31-30 lead.
The game-winning score came at the end of a methodical, 18-play, 85-yard drive that took 8:10 off the game clock.
Jordan Wright returned a Virginia Tech fumble 28 yards for a TD on the game’s final play to make the final score UK 37, Tech 30.
The Kentucky Wildcats (8-5) will forever reign as the 2019 Belk Bowl champions.
“Obviously, one heck of a football game,” Kentucky Coach Mark Stoops said. “... I’m so proud of our coaching staff and our players to once again find a way to win. And that kind of personifies our year.”
Where do you start with Bowden’s day?
Bowden said the early extra-curricular activities between the teams were due to “a lot of emotion.”
After he cooled down, the UK star said he realized “I could have hurt my team and not been out there with them, so I just apologized to my program, my teammates, I did it before the game, apologized to those guys,” he said. “We respect Virginia Tech. If I could go back, I wouldn’t do it.”
From the time quarterback injuries necessitated the emergency installation of Bowden as UK’s signal caller, the dynamic playmaker from Youngstown, Ohio, has continually topped himself in “wow-factor” games.
Yet Bowden saved his best for last.
In his own farewell to the sidelines, venerable Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster stacked eight, nine, even 10 men at the line of scrimmage to stop Bowden.
Nevertheless, the UK star carried the ball 34 times for 233 yards and two touchdowns.
His masterpiece was the final drive. With Kentucky’s bid for a second straight bowl win and a second-consecutive season with at least eight wins hanging in the balance, Bowden led UK on a time-consuming drive.
From the Kentucky 15 with 8:25 left in the game, UK had arrived on the Virginia Tech 13 with 19 seconds to go.
The Wildcats still had one timeout, so it would have been possible for Bowden to run the ball.
Yet the UK brain trust knew once that timeout was burned, they would not be able to call a subsequent run play without risking the game clock expiring.
So Kentucky called a pass play to Ahmad Wagner. That call was where Bowden ceased being “a wide receiver playing quarterback” and became simply a QB.
Bowden changed the play.
“I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this, I kind of checked out of (the called play),” Bowden said.
Said Ali: “(Bowden) came over to me before the play and told me to ‘Run a post. Get open.’ That’s what I did and he trusted me to get me the ball.”
When the play went for a TD, the blue-clad half of the Bank of America Stadium crowd of 44,138 went bonkers.
The postgame rehash centered on Bowden’s place in Kentucky football history.
Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart marveled at Bowden’s game management skills and awareness on the game-winning drive.
“He understood the game situation well enough to manage it just as it needed to be done,” Barnhart said.
UK center Drake Jackson praised Bowden’s toughness and unselfishness.
Said Jackson: “For a guy who is leaving early (to turn pro) and decided to play in the bowl; then, to decide to play hard in the game, you really have to give him a lot of credit. ... He was getting rocked a couple of times and he got right back up.”
Vince Marrow, the Kentucky tight ends coach and the recruiting ace who wooed Bowden to Lexington, went farther.
In a Tweet, he declared Bowden the best player ever to play football for the University of Kentucky.
“Are you kidding me?” Marrow said. “You know he’s running the ball, probably, 90 percent of the time and what did he run for? I think he is the best.”
I do not know who the best player in Kentucky Wildcats football history is.
I am pretty confident in saying no UK player has ever had a day more zany nor a performance more unforgettable than what Lynn Bowden produced in his final game in Kentucky blue and white.
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 6:49 PM.
