Braylon Mullins Buzzer-Beater Lifts UConn Past Duke, Into Final Four

Braylon Mullins recovered a loose ball near midcourt in Washington, D.C., down two with fewer than five seconds left against the No. 1 seed in the country. He passed to Alex Karaban. Karaban passed it back. There was nothing left to do but throw it from 35 feet and hope.

It went in.

Mullins' three-pointer, which ESPN clocked at 0.3 seconds remaining with multiple outlets reporting 0.4, gave UConn a 73-72 victory over top-seeded Duke on Sunday and sent the Huskies to the Final Four in Indianapolis, completing a 19-point first-half comeback in the process.

The final sequence unfolded in under 10 seconds. After Silas Demary Jr. made one of two free throws with 10.0 seconds left to cut Duke's lead to two, the Blue Devils tried to bleed the clock with keep-away passing. Dame Sarr and Cameron Boozer exchanged passes before Sarr fed Cayden Boozer near halfcourt. Demary and Mullins both collapsed on Boozer; Demary got a hand on the ball and Mullins recovered it in the backcourt. He passed to Karaban, the winningest player in UConn history. Karaban saw Cameron Boozer switching onto him and gave it right back to Mullins, now 35 feet from the basket as the clock dissolved. He launched with no other option.

"Hell yeah," Mullins said afterward. "You got to have the confidence."

It was the freshman's first game-winning shot in the final seconds since his junior year of high school and his first ever in a potentially season-ending situation. "This is in its own category," he said. "This is different." Mullins grew up just outside of Indianapolis and will return there Saturday to play No. 3 Illinois in the national semifinals.

Tarris Reed Jr.'s 26 points kept UConn within reach during a second half in which Duke still led by double digits with just over six minutes remaining. A flurry of three-pointers in the final seven minutes pushed the Huskies to the edge, though they somehow finished 5-for-23 from deep, having missed 18 of their first 19 attempts from beyond the arc.

UConn coach Dan Hurley waved off a timeout as the final seconds collapsed. "It just felt like the window where you've just got to let March Madness take over," Hurley said. "March magic."

Duke coach Jon Scheyer was left processing a collapse that ended his team's 35-3 season. "I could not be more disappointed and feeling for our guys, at the same time of just trying to process what happened," Scheyer said. "I don't have the words. I don't have the words." Cayden Boozer, whose deflected pass triggered the sequence, offered the starkest accounting: "I ruined our team's season."

The defeat marked Duke's second straight catastrophic late collapse; last season the Blue Devils led Houston by six with 1:14 remaining in the national semifinals before losing. No. 1 seeds had gone 134-0 in NCAA Tournament games when leading by 15 or more at halftime. After Sunday, that record stands at 134-1.

The moment also closed a 36-year-old wound for Connecticut. In 1990, Christian Laettner hit a buzzer-beater to beat UConn in the Elite Eight and send Duke to the Final Four. Sunday's shot answered it in kind.

In an era when the transfer portal reshuffles rosters annually and NIL deals can make freshmen commodities before they play a game, one shot redrew every calculation. Redshirt senior Karaban, who stayed with the program from his freshman year through to this moment, put Sunday in its plainest terms. "The other two Elite Eight games were like 30-point wins," he said. "This one actually felt like a March Madness moment."

UConn is now two wins from a third national title in four seasons, a feat accomplished by only Kentucky and UCLA, and one neither program has managed in the last 50 years.