WAYNE KNUCKLES: Don't take away a Kentucky fan's longest-running heartache

Kentucky basketball fans don't have a lot.

We haven't been to a Final Four in a while. The portal has scrambled everything. And our football team — God bless 'em — keeps us humble.

But we had one thing.

One miserable, gut-punch, can't-look-away moment that belonged to us forever. March 28, 1992. The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Grant Hill throws a pass three-quarters the length of the floor. Christian Laettner catches it at the free-throw line, fakes right, dribbles once, turns, and buries a jumper at the buzzer. Duke 104, Kentucky 103.

Our hearts. On the floor. In Philadelphia.

They've been replaying that shot on CBS every March for over thirty years. You can't watch a tournament without seeing it. It follows us like a bad haircut. Laettner celebrating. Pitino standing there in a fog. Our boys weeping in the locker room.

It was ours. Our wound. Our White Whale.

And we wore it. Proudly, in that perverse way that only sports fans can. Because that shot — that perfect, hateful, impossibly executed shot — told the world that Kentucky belonged in that game.

That we were good enough to have our hearts broken by the greatest moment in the history of March Madness.

You can't be the victim of a legend unless you were worthy of being in the room.

We were in the room.

Then last week, UConn freshman named Braylon Mullins stole the ball and chucked a 35-footer at the buzzer to knock Duke out of the Elite Eight. Nineteen-point comeback. Duke goes home. UConn goes to the Final Four.

And just like that, people started talking.

"Is this the new Laettner shot?"

No.

Stop it.

First of all — and I say this with full awareness that I sound like a man arguing over a barstool — UConn hitting a buzzer-beater against Duke is not the same as Duke hitting one against Kentucky.

UConn beating Duke is the basketball equivalent of one bully tripping another bully. Nobody weeps for Duke. Nobody carries that one around for thirty-three years.

We carry ours.

Second, you can't just manufacture a Laettner moment. That shot was perfect — ten for ten from the field, ten for ten from the line. The man played a flawless game and then ended it with a dagger that made grown men in Lexington cry in real time on a Saturday afternoon. It was cruel in the way that only perfection can be cruel.

Mullins hit a hail mary. A wild, beautiful, lucky bomb from downtown. Good shot. Great moment.

Not our shot.

I know what's happening here. The sports media machine needs a new story every ten minutes, and somebody decided it was time to retire our wound and replace it with something shinier. They want to move on.

We don't move on.

We're Kentucky fans. Moving on is not in the manual.

That shot in 1992 is still warm. And until somebody hits a buzzer-beater that beats us — beats us — in an Elite Eight, in overtime, with everything on the line, after we just got off probation and fought our way back and had Jamal Mashburn and a whole team of Unforgettables giving everything they had…

Don't compare anything to that.

We earned that heartbreak.

It's the only trophy we got from that year.

Leave it alone.

Wayne Knuckles is a 40-plus year veteran of the newspaper industry and publisher of The Wayne Train. He began his career as a sports writer for his hometown weekly newspaper, The Pineville Sun.