It is really hard to make history at UConn nowadays. The men’s team has six national titles and now, after Sunday’s miraculous comeback, eight Final Fours. That’s not even counting the conference regular season and tournament titles. And we don’t have nearly enough time to dive into the excellence that is the women’s basketball team. That’s a whole other stratosphere.
But Braylon Mullins broke through. The Indiana kid hit a historic 40-footer with 0.3 seconds left to complete an improbable comeback,
take down the top overall seeded Duke Blue Devils and send UConn to its third Final Four in four years. The Duke radio call is worth a listen (or 100). You can hear Duke’s title hopes pop like a balloon. “Oh he hit it.”
The parallels to 1999 are so spot on it’s almost scary. That Duke team, much like this one, was a juggernaut until they ran into UConn. So it’s fitting that the Huskies erased their 19-point deficit and “shocked the world” on the exact 27th anniversary of the 1999 title win and UConn’s first-ever title.
But back to the comeback. A 19-point deficit is a lot. When Duke led 44-25 with 2:02 left in the first half, UConn’s win probability was 2.7 percent. After the Huskies cut it to 15 at halftime, those odds went “up” to 4.5 percent, but things still weren’t looking good. One seeds in the NCAA tournament were 134-0 all time with a 15-point lead or greater at halftime.
The second half comeback didn’t have a massive run, but it was a bunch of small wins that just kept compounding. On the backs of Tarris Reed Jr, Alex Karaban, Solo Ball and Silas Demary Jr., UConn slowly chipped away. For every blow the Huskies delivered, Duke fought back with some tough buckets from Cam Boozer until UConn’s toughness started to wear the Blue Devils down.
A pair of threes from Demary Jr. got it to seven with 6:07 to play. A Ball and-one in transition cut it to three. Boozer answered on the other end and eventually stretched the lead to five with 1:51. The vibes were still not great. But then Ball hit a free throw and Karaban hit a massive three to get within one. All night long, UConn couldn’t hit from deep until they finally did.
Boozer came through again to put Duke up three and seemingly put the Huskies away for good. Demary Jr. drew a foul, but only made one free throw. With 10 seconds left, UConn needed a miracle to even get the ball back.
The Huskies never panicked.
They went for the trap in the corner, but Duke passed out of it. All the Blue Devils had to do was hold the ball! But Duke wanted the exclamation point. Cayden Boozer had the ball at half court and just had to get the ball over Mullins and Demary Jr. to Patrick Ngongba for the easy dunk.
Demary Jr. got a hand on it. Mullins grabbed it in the backcourt and found Karaban, who has hit his own share of big shots. Karaban had Cam Boozer in his face, so he passed it back to Mullins, who hadn’t hit a three all game on four attempts and frankly, hadn’t really been close to hitting one.
Fifth time was the charm. Swish. Comeback complete.
Just like that, a new viral March Madness moment was born, Duke was dead, and UConn was heading to Indianapolis. Given the comeback, the setting and the shot itself, there truly may not be a better comeback in program history. There’s only a few, some from this season, that are even remotely close.
Jan. 7, 2026 — UConn 103, Providence 98 (OT)
Prior to Sunday, this was the Huskies’ biggest comeback of the season and it was a banger. UConn played terribly in the first half and most of the second half. They trailed by 10 at halftime and by as much as 13 with 8:24 left to play. The Huskies outscored PC 14-3 in the final three minutes of the game to frantically force overtime. Once they got there, they blew the Friars out of the water. Mullins had eight of his game-high 24 points in the overtime as the Huskies eventually cruised to a five-point win, avoiding a resumé breaking loss and extending their win streak to 11 games.
Dec. 2, 2025 — UConn 61, Kansas 56
An eight-point deficit, which UConn faced with 7:30 left in the first half, is not an insurmountable one. But at Allen Fieldhouse it felt like it was much more than that. Kansas doesn’t lose much at the Phog, and it was buzzing when the Jayhawks got off to a hot start. But Mullins, in just his second collegiate, helped turn the tide in the second half. He had 17 points, including his first career free throws with less than 10 seconds left to secure the program’s first ever win at Kansas and hand Bill Self just his 22nd loss ever at Allen Fieldhouse.
Jan. 5, 2021 — UConn 65, Marquette 54 (The Tyler Polley Game)
It’s impossible to mention great UConn comebacks without The Tyler Polley Game. The Huskies trailed by 18 with 17:41 left to play before outscoring Marquette 42-13 in the final 16 minutes to pick up the win in Milwaukee. Polley, who joined UConn during the Kevin Ollie era but stuck through the transition to Dan Hurley, was magnificent off the bench. The senior scored a career-high 23 points in just 24 minutes with five 3-pointers, most of which came in the second half comeback.
