Mullins’ last-second three completes UConn’s 19-point comeback in Elite Eight upset of Duke

Twenty-five combined Final Four appearances. Eleven combined national championships.

The blood in college basketball doesn’t get any bluer than Duke and Connecticut. And in their fifth meeting in an NCAA Elite Eight or later, the Huskies and Blue Devils combined to produce a March Madness classic.

UConn scored eight points in the game’s final minute, and guard Braylon Mullins’ logo-deep 3-pointer with less than a second remaining capped a 19-point comeback as the second-seeded Huskies upset top overall seed Duke 73-72, to win the East Region at Capital One Arena Sunday.

“I had the ball, and I know [teammate Alex Karaban] had just hit one. So I threw him it with four seconds left, and man, he just threw the ball back to me, and I knew I had to put one up. Man, I’m just happy that was the one that went down tonight,” Mullins said.

UConn advances to its third Final Four in the last four seasons, with the previous two appearances leading to back-to-back national championships. South Region champion Illinois awaits next weekend in Indianapolis as the Huskies seek their seventh title.

“Obviously that’s an epic, just another chapter in the UConn-Duke NCAA Tournament dramatics,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “Obviously a really tough way for their season to end. I thought they played great. I thought they punched us in the mouth with incredible force.”

Center Tarris Reed Jr. led UConn (33-5) with 26 points and nine rebounds, while guard Silas Demary Jr. added 11 points. UConn made four 3-pointers in the last seven minutes, including two in the final minute after having made only one the rest of the game, to complete the fourth-largest comeback in tournament history.

“I knew it was bad. I kept asking the assistant coaches, and no one would tell me what it was. I knew it was bad,” Hurley said of his team’s perimeter shooting. “I thought a lot of them were pretty good looks … but if we were going to win the game, we were going to have to make a couple of threes down the stretch.”

I thought we were getting decent looks. Obviously, Braylon’s look at the end was a bomb, but Silas’ looks, they were clean. I thought we got a lot of good looks. We just — you know, for whatever reason, this team has not shot to Solo Ball, Braylon Mullins, AK — those are three of the best shooters in the country. We just haven’t had that shooting magic, but then we did.

Duke forward Cameron Boozer led all scorers with 27 points, while his brother, Cayden, notched 15. The Blue Devils (35-3) lost for the first time since another last-second defeat to archrival North Carolina on Feb. 7, snapping a national-best 14-game winning streak.

“I think we fought hard. We gave a lot, but I think as a whole we could have gave a lot more in the second half. We came out a little flat and gave them a little bit of life,” Cameron said. “When you’re playing a team as good as UConn, that’s all they really need.”

In each of Duke’s last four losses, dating to last season, all have featured the Blue Devils holding double-digit second-half leads that eventually evaporated.

“I could not be more disappointed and feeling for our guys at the same time of just trying to process what happened,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “I don’t have the words. I don’t have the words.”

The Blue Devils led 72-70 in the final 10 seconds, but a slow inbounding process up the floor was stolen at midcourt by Demary. Two passes later, the ball made its way to Mullins for a 35-foot game-winner, setting off a wild scene.

“Still a loss of words. Still processing all of what just happened. I think that last possession, it was just we were trying to foul the worst free-throw shooter on the floor, and Silas ended up deflecting the pass to the other end of the floor,” Mullins said.

“We just have to secure it, right? We got it. They had a foul. I was ready for a timeout. We’ve just got to hold on,” Scheyer said of the sequence. “Look, it’s going to be tough, but it’s not going to be on one play.”

Reed scored 12 of UConn’s first 16 points, but didn’t get much help anywhere else on the floor. Karaban, the all-time games played leader in Connecticut history, struggled from the start, missing all five of his shots in the first half and not scoring until the 12-minute mark of the second. Three of those were from 3-point range, where UConn missed 10 of its 11 attempts in the first half — part of only a 35% overall shooting clip.

The brothers Boozer pounced, scoring a combined 27 first-half points — the only Blue Devils in double figures — as Duke carried a 44-29 lead into halftime. UConn labored through a 2-of-15 stretch from the floor in the middle of the half, not making a field goal for nearly 6 minutes. Reed didn’t score in the final 12 minutes of the half, seven of which were spent on the bench with two fouls.

“We’re on these guys. We stress them in practice. We put a lot of pressure on them on a daily basis to do the right things, to do everything at game speed, to do everything hard, to do everything tough, to be prepared because that’s what it takes to win games like this or to stay in a game like that where you’re getting outplayed,” Hurley said.

Whistles finally caught up to Duke in the second half. Five fouls in the first 5 minutes put UConn in the bonus by the 14-minute mark.

“We just felt like we let our offense really dictate how we were playing in the first half when we necessarily didn’t have shots fall or the flow of our offense really got disrupted,” Karaban said. “I think when we took pride on the defensive end, everything changed.”

Reed caught fire again early in the second, scoring 11 in the first 10 minutes of the half, while no one on his team had more than eight. UConn made back-to-back threes to cut the lead to seven, 65-58, after missing a stunning 17 of its first 18 attempts.

“Honestly, it was just trying to win at this point,” Reed said of his efforts to keep UConn in the game. “It could be my last college basketball game, and they were just like, ’Go for it all.’ Coach told us before the game, ’You’ve got to swing for the fences, go as hard as you can’ … Eventually, guys were going to knock down shots, which they did.”

An ensuing 6-0 run led by Ball and punctuated with him converting an and-one got the Huskies to within 2 with 3:42 left before the final minute theatrics created another indelible March moment. The sensational shot allows Mullins, a Greenfield, Indiana, native, to play in a Final Four in his home state.

“When I saw him release it, I was like, that really might go in,” Karaban said. “It went in, and the Indiana kid sent us to Indianapolis.”