He felt his right knee shift and the discomfort that followed, but as he slowly walked toward the locker room inside Tiger Stadium with a towel draped over his head, Harold Perkins thought he avoided the worst.

That's what he told himself at first. Maybe his knee was tweaked or hyperextended. One coach recalled hearing that might be the case, only for an athletic trainer to tell him a few minutes later Perkins likely had a torn ACL .

"He was trying to go back out," said Perkins' mother, Bertha Walton. "I said, 'Son, you can't go back out there. It's OK to sit out the remaining couple of minutes.' He was like, 'No.' And I was like, 'Son, you can't do it.' "

His adrenaline still was pumping when Perkins went home after LSU beat UCLA on Sept. 21. At least 20 family members had come o

See Full Page