BRAY OF HOPE: Mullins’ game-winner caps all-time comeback as UConn clips Duke to return to Final Four

WASHINGTON — At just 19 years old, Braylon Mullins is still too young to drink alcohol legally.

When that time does come, however, whatever his preferred beverage may be will almost assuredly be free of charge in the state of Connecticut.

Mullins’ 35-foot 3-pointer with three-tenths of a second remaining in regulation Sunday completed an all-time comeback for UConn, who erased a 19-point deficit to steal the last Final Four berth from No. 1 overall seed Duke, putting the exclamation point on a 73-72 victory.

“This is in its own category,” the freshman proclaimed after the Huskies (33-5) booked their eighth Final Four trip by slowly chipping away at Duke’s massive lead in the second half, drawing within single digits for good with six minutes to play and not relenting even as the Blue Devils answered every potential UConn rally. “It’s the whole category.”

Mullins was the beneficiary of a broken play in the final ten seconds of regulation. After Silas Demary, Jr. split a pair of free throws, he atoned for the letdown by deflecting a Cayden Boozer pass. Demary found Alex Karaban, who passed up a shot that would have etched his name deeper into the annals of UConn history, dishing to Mullins for the coup de grâce.

“We were trying to force a turnover and foil their worst free throw shooter,” Mullins said of his vantage point of a sequence that will live in March lore forever. “The ball got tipped and I threw the ball to AK. I thought AK was gonna shoot the ball, he had just hit one, and he threw the ball back to me.”

“I saw Braylon and I saw we had like, five seconds left,” Karaban added with regard to his own angle of the play. “I thought I could have shot it, but then I saw (Cameron) Boozer right in front of me, and I think Dame Sarr, too. So I pitched it to Braylon.”

For UConn to even be in that position after the first half it endured borders on miraculous. The Huskies missed 17 of their first 18 attempts from long distance, and were unable to stop Duke’s length and athleticism in an opening stanza that saw the Blue Devils open up a 40-21 cushion with 5:01 to play before halftime. UConn was able to string together enough stops to get within 15 at the interlude, but the belief in one another was unwavering.

“In the huddles, we were just saying, ‘war after war,’” Demary recalled. “Let’s try to win each war by three. And I think we did that. We did what we needed to do. We said we needed to rebound and defend at halftime, and I feel like we came out there. I think (Duke) only scored 28 points in the second half, so to be able to defend like that and have each other’s back, it was just big. Through every timeout, we were telling each other to stay together, (to) be even more connected.”

Still, it seemed as though the momentum did not truly begin to swing until the 3:42 mark, when Solo Ball stripped Isaiah Evans and turned the giveaway into a three-point play that pared the UConn deficit to 67-65, a moment the junior guard attributed to the resilience of his group.

“We had to crawl back from 19 down and be able to beat the best team in the whole thing,” Ball said. “We know what we’re capable of, too. We had that belief that we’re the best team, so we had to be able to fight tonight.”

Duke would pad its lead to four points inside the final minute before Karaban, staring down the potential conclusion to an all-time great UConn career, knocked down a deep triple to bring the Huskies back within one. A Cameron Boozer jumper, where a potential traveling violation was not called, got the Blue Devil cushion back to three points before Demary was fouled with ten seconds left. Missing the first free throw, but making the second, it kept the door open before he kicked it down by getting a hand on Cayden Boozer’s outlet pass.

“If I run up, I gotta make a play, because I know there’s at least one or two guys behind me,” Demary said of his instincts in the moment. “I just jumped in, deflected it, and then guys were able to get the ball. And then Braylon, with the confidence he had, took that big-time shot and hit it.”

With another all-time March moment firmly in tow, UConn will now go to Indianapolis to face Illinois in the first of two national semifinals on Saturday. And for Mullins, an Indiana native who grew up 30 minutes east of Lucas Oil Stadium in Greenfield, one shining moment now affords him the chance to return home a conquering hero.

“Man, you play for those moments,” he gushed. “You dream about that, you definitely had that in your childhood. So that’s a one-of-a-kind experience.”