UConn’s last-gasp 3-pointer to shock Duke was, appropriately, on the edge of madness
By Dana O’Neil, CNN
Washington, DC (CNN) — He launched his shot, fittingly, just to the right of the two Ss that finish the words “Madness” on the half-court logo. Because where else would an Indiana kid, born to hoop but stuck in a beyond-the-arc hole for 39 minutes and 59 seconds, find basketball immortality other than right on the edge of madness?
Braylon Mullins grew up in Greenfield, Indiana, a bedroom community just outside of Indianapolis. His high school gym was not the massive cathedrals built to serve the altars of Hoosier hysteria, but with 4,620 seats, the Greenfield Cougar Den is no slouch, either. Every Christmas morning since the Covid-19 pandemic, Mullins and his little brothers – Cole and Clay – dip into the high school gym and start shooting.
This is how great shooters are grown in Indiana, through a blend of muscle-memory repetition and flat-out nerve.
Which is why Mullins, short on every shot he took in the regional final against Duke, did not think twice when Alex Karaban passed the ball back to him like a hot potato. Former Villanova coach Jay Wright used to have a saying for it, back 10 years ago next month, when Kris Jenkins drained a three for the ages in the 2016 national championship: “Shoot ‘em up and sleep in the streets.”
“Shooters just shoot,’’ is Mullins iteration.
The shot this shooter shot was even more improbable than the one Jenkins drained against North Carolina. It was the final bucket in a game in which the Huskies trailed by as many as 19 and 15 at the half. It was a 35-foot swish for a team that went 5 for 23 from the arc and from a player who otherwise was 0 for 4 from long distance and it came against Duke, an efficient offensive monster, on the doorstep of the Final Four.
And it slipped through the nylon with .4 seconds left, leaving Duke nothing more than a football pass prayer that Karaban swatted away like a volleyball block, the ball dropping harmlessly as the buzzer sounded.
“I thought the score was tied,’’ Mullins said. “I didn’t know we were ahead until I looked at the scoreboard.’’
UConn 73, Duke 72. A score so improbable that even the people who witnessed it weren’t sure what they had just seen.
On the court amid the celebrating Huskies, two fans watched the replay on their phones, screaming as if they were watching it in real time. “How did it go in?” one yelled to his buddy.
Chris Hurley, mother of Dan and ex-Dukie Bobby and wife of legendary high school coach Bob Sr., has seen a few thousand basketball games or two in her life.
“Never anything like that,’’ she said, shaking her head. “Never.’’
Assistant coach Mike Nardi, a former Villanova player and byproduct of the Wright edict, shook his head. “Sometimes you need a Hail Mary,’’ he said. “And this time God answered.’’
“Honestly, I was thinking about the furniture I was having delivered this week,’’ said Andrea Hurley, wife of head coach, Dan. “I had made peace with it.’’
Instead, the Hurleys will need someone to wait for the delivery truck. They’ll be out of town next week as UConn returns to its third Final Four in four years, where the Huskies will meet Illinois on Saturday night in Indianapolis.
As Mullins climbed the ladder to snip the nets, Dan Hurley stood back and watched him. A black Final Four hat on his head and red-and-blue confetti tucked into the back of it, the head coach shook his head in wonder.
“Look at that Indiana boy up there,’’ Hurley said. “Dragging our asses to Indiana with him.’’
“This is what he does”
It is the way that these games go, particularly in the month of March, that the final shot will be the play everyone remembers, broken down like a hoops Zapruder film on highlights and social media. Though it was the game winner, it is not why the game was won. This game was won as far back as October, back when Hurley gathered his team together for its first practice and introduced the misery to his own madness.
To play for Hurley is to understand that taking a play off is not acceptable, that bending over and tugging at your short hems – a sure sign, in Hurley’s estimation, of weakness – will earn you either a death stare or a run up the steps. No matter how often he tries to sell his Zen to reporters, or how many candles he lights in his office, or how many times he soaks in a salt bath, he will remain relentless and ruthless.
But when it works, when the team starts to think like its coach, that’s when a 19-point comeback against the overall No. 1 seed with the player of the year becomes possible.
“This is what he does,’’ said general manager Tom Moore, who has worked with Hurley for a decade. “You go to our practices. We grind. We work. This is what he builds. This is how he wants his team to be.’’
This particularly team has had to grind a lot more than others. A 33-5 record belies some of their struggles. For the past month, the Huskies have looked only OK.
Blown out against St. John’s, demoralized at Marquette, and dusted in the Big East Tournament final to the Johnnies again, they came into the NCAA tournament in need of a regroup. It didn’t happen altogether. UConn looked lackluster in the first round against Furman, needed a Tarris Reed Jr. bailout of 31 points and 27 rebounds to secure the win, and gave back all of a 19-point advantage of their own in the Sweet 16 against Michigan State.
When Duke stomped out like some sort of machine, it was fair to presume the Huskies were out of gas. Karaban’s shots all clanked off the front of the rim, as if he simply didn’t have the legs to make them and Mullins was similarly ineffective.
Reed had some luck in the low post, but the Blue Devils also started to double him, slowing his production.
Yet in the locker room at halftime, Hurley was happy to find a team that was not defeated.
“They were pissed off,’’ he said. “There was a lot of, ‘This ain’t happening. They’re good, but we’re better.’’
Duke left to process another collapse
There is no fast track to overcome a 15-point hole. It requires the patience of a sculptor, happily chipping away at a stone and hoping it turns into something.
At the first TV timeout of the second half, Duke’s lead was still 14, but at the under-12, it was seven.
There is something about single digits on a scoreboard that changes things for both teams. It feeds a sense of belief in the chasers and dread in the team that has watched its lead dwindle.
“I’m just trying to process what happened,’’ Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “I don’t have the words. I don’t have the words.’’
And then came the play, not the one that won the game literally, but the one that won the game.
Isaiah Evans slipped trying to curl to the rim and Solo Ball scooped up the ball, racing toward the basket, chased by the likely player of the year, Cam Boozer. Boozer caught up to Ball at the rim, but the guard muscled his way toward the bucket anyway, kissing the ball of the glass to score and draw an and one. When he sank the free throw, the score was suddenly 67-65.
The real game-winner, the one that will be impossible to miss in highlight reels from now until forever, shouldn’t have happened. Duke led, 72-70, with 10 seconds to play.
“We just have to secure it, right?” Scheyer said. “We got it. They had a foul. I was ready for a timeout. We’ve just got to hold on.’’
Instead, point guard Cayden Boozer got the ball at half court, walking into a trap from Mullins and Silas Demary, Jr. Rather than absorb the foul, Boozer tried to send a slip pass downcourt.
Demary scooped up the ball and flipped it to Mullins, who tossed it to Karaban. The fifth-year senior, having his own lousy shooting night, had finally sunk a three only 40 seconds earlier and Mullins figured he’d take the winner.
Instead, Karaban tossed the ball back to the freshman. “I was like, ‘What? OK.’ I mean, you don’t have a lot of time to think.’’ Mullins said.
A good 10 minutes later, after his team had assembled on stage beneath the confetti and posed for pictures, Hurley stood about two feet away from Mullins’ launching pad.
“Where did he shoot it?” Hurley asked.
When reporters pointed in the direction of the Ss in Madness, Hurley smiled. “Oh yeah,’’ he said. “That’s his range. No problem.’’
Perhaps not in a normal world, but in March? In March, there’s nowhere else for a boy from Indiana to sink the biggest shot of his career than right on the end of “Madness.”
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