GREENFIELD, Ind. (AP) — UConn guard Braylon Mullins might be the talk of college basketball this week. He is still just a small-town Indiana guy at heart.
Here in his hometown of Greenfield, the streets carry common names such as Main and State. American flags and stone buildings dot the town square and those who put this usually low-key 25,000-person city on the map — there aren't many — are revered like family.
So naturally in a state that treats
basketball like a religion and the sport's biggest stars like royalty, nobody casts a bigger shadow in this community now than the slender 6-foot-6, 196-pound, 19-year-old freshman who changed Final Four weekend with one brilliant shining moment Sunday afternoon.
Mullins' 35-foot game-winning 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left didn't just make him an instant celebrity or send the Huskies to their third Final Four in four years. In a community full of fans who typically root for Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame or Butler, Mullins has suddenly turned Greenfield, Indiana, into a haven of UConn fans.
“We knew he was good, but for him to go and play all the minutes he has and to perform as well as he has at UConn after being injured the first portion of the year, that’s great,” Greenfield-Central High School athletic director Jared Manning said. “But to do it and have that moment that’s going to live on forever, in maybe the biggest game of his life to this point on national television, we couldn’t have dreamed this up.”
Mullins seemed destined for this type of fame when he started turning heads in middle school even though that's anything but the norm in a city that is just a 37-minute drive from Lucas Oil Stadium where the East Region champion Huskies (33-5) will face South Region champion Illinois (28-8) on Saturday for a trip to the national championship game.
Ask workers and customers at the local coffee counter to name the city's best athletes and former Major League Baseball pitcher Kyle Gibson and pitcher Drey Jamison, who is in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization, are often recited. The actual title probably belongs to Jaycie Phelps, who was part of the 1996 Olympic champion gymnastics team dubbed "The Magnificent Seven.”
Mullins is now on the list regardless of what's to come.
Indiana is rife with high school basketball lore and seemingly every school, large or small, owns a chapter in that book. Greenfield-Central has been a rare exception: Neither the boys nor the girls teams have won a state title, and the boys team hasn't won a sectional championship since 1998 despite featuring Mullins for three seasons.
How tough was it? When Luke Meredith took over as coach in 2019-20, he inherited a team that went 4-20 the previous year amid four straight losing seasons. Meredith left as the winningest coach in school history (109-37) following the 2024-25 season, success that came in large part because of Mullins and his family.
Josh, the father, was a former college player at IUPUI, now known as IU-Indianapolis, and served as an assistant for Meredith. Mullins' younger twin brothers, Cole and Clay, also played and are expected to play at a nearby Division III school next season.
It didn't take long for coaches and fans to realize the oldest brother, Braylon, was different.
He personified Meredith's motto — "juice, compete, standard" — by scoring 16.9 points as a sophomore and 25.0 as a junior before averaging 32.9 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists and 4.2 steals as a senior. He broke the school's single-game scoring record twice in his final prep season, scoring 51 and later 52 points.
He wound up as the school's scoring leader (2,158 points) and became the first player in school history to win the prestigious IndyStar Indiana Mr. Basketball Award winner as well as becoming the program's first McDonald's All-American.
So when Mullins made that incredible shot Sunday, nobody in Greenfield was surprised.
“We’ve watched him play basketball since he was in middle school,” Mayor Guy Titus said. “We saw that shot many times here at Greenfield-Central when he was growing up, when he was playing varsity ball here. But to see it on national TV with like everybody comparing it to the Christian Laettner thing — I'm old enough to remember that. It was one of those magical moments."
The Final Four on Saturday will not be the first time Mullins has played close to home since heading to Storrs.
In February, a large contingent of city residents made the short drive into Indianapolis to one of Indiana's most revered basketball cathedrals, Hinkle Fieldhouse. The hometown hero responded well, scoring 13 of his 15 points in the first half of an 80-70 victory over Butler.
Another little exodus could happen again: Manning said he anticipated having discussions this week about whether the school would cancel classes, offer bus rides or both for fans to attend UConn's open practice on Friday, which is scheduled to be held at noon. Even if not, Greenfield faithful are expected to go and cheer their new favorite son.
“When he calls home and asks his dad about this or that, it just reminds he's still a young man who is just like every other college kid,” said Chuck McMichael, deputy chief of the Greenfield Police Department.
McMichael knows because everyone in a town whose biggest festival honors poet James Whitcomb Riley seems to have a personal connection to Mullins.
Josh Holmes, like McMichael, works for the police department and has been Greenfield-Central's longtime school resource officer. Titus happens to be Braylon Mullins' great uncle. All of it has made this college season for the UConn freshman special.
The only thing better would be forcing a change of the signs greeting visitors to Greenfield by winning a national championship.
“When you come into Greenwood, you know, it says Home of Olympic champion Jaycie Phelps and Mr. Basketball Brayton Mullins,” Titus said. “You know Greenfield is known for its the Riley Festival. Now people are calling me, saying, ‘We need to change it to the Mullins Festival, we need to put up a statue of Braylon making the shot.' It’s funny all the comments I've heard.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
