It was an uphill battle for UConn on Sunday. The second-seeded Huskies started the game going 1-for-18 from 3-point range and trailed top-seeded seed Duke by double digits with 6:37 remaining in the second half. That’s when things took a turn for the better.
UConn pulled off a stunning comeback, thanks to its gritty culture, which has been curated since the preseason and developed to come through in moments like Sunday’s Elite Eight 73-72 win over the Blue Devils.
“It takes a strong team … a tough team … tough men,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said in the postgame press conference. “We run a very intense program. 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 [and] to be prepared — because that’s what it takes to win games like this.”
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UConn went down early, falling behind 40-21 in the first half while Duke “punched us in the mouth,” according to Hurley. Duke freshman Cameron Boozer was dominating the game on both sides, and the Blue Devils took a 15-point lead into the break. The Huskies cut the margin to single digits with 6:07 remaining in the second half when Silas Demary Jr. knocked down back-to-back 3s. Demary epitomized the “tough men” Hurley was referring to, as he sustained a high-ankle sprain in the Big East Tournament and returned less than two weeks later.
Tarris Reed Jr. scored a layup, then dished a sweet pass to Solo Ball for another layup before Ball converted a three-point play that cut the margin to two. Duke answered, extending the margin to five and taking a two-point lead into its final possession. The Blue Devils just needed to get fouled and convert at the line to seal the game. Instead, UConn’s ball pressure flummoxed Duke.
Instead of letting himself get fouled, Cayden Boozer tried to escape pressure with a pass over the top of two defenders. Demary tipped it, Braylon Mullins collected it and passed it along to Alex Karaban, who gave it right back, deferring to the freshman for the decisive shot.
“It’s still a loss of words, still processing all [that] just happened,” Mullins said after the game. “I had the ball, and I know [Alex Karaban] had just hit one. So I threw him the ball with four seconds left, and he just threw the ball back to me.
“I knew I had to put one up. Man, I’m just happy that’s the one that went down tonight.”
Mullins, like his teammates, had struggled from 3-point range earlier in the game, missing his first four attempts from deep. However, he made the one that counted most. That’s what UConn did collectively Sunday — showed up when it counted.
In what Hurley called “another epic chapter in the UConn-Duke NCAA Tournament dramatics”, the Huskies stuck with it and came out on top. “You’re having a really bad shooting night … but what kicks in is just a bunch of strong men, a strong team, players that let their coaches coach them hard and prepare them for tough moments,” Hurley said.
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