Two Dazed Freshmen Authored The Tournament’s Immortal Moment

UConn freshman Braylon Mullins watched his last shot Sunday night arc toward the basket from 35 feet away. If his eyes had been shut, he still would've known, not only from the pandemonium of the crowd and the euphoria of his teammates, but from the wonderful knife-plunge noise of a swish from great distance. Chuh! That's the best sound basketball has to offer. It's very much like the sound of Michael Myers jamming a large blade into someone's chest, which is fitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWfmFK3lsag

The shot completed an incredible second-half comeback for UConn. It win sends the Huskies through to the Final Four, for the third time in four years, and it sends the top-seeded Duke Blue Devils to hell. The shot also should not have happened. Duke had the ball up two points with exactly 10 seconds left on the clock. Because a 10-second violation is not really a danger under these circumstances—you can afford the turnover if as a result the ball is going to your opponent on a side-out with some tiny fraction of a second left on the clock—Duke accomplished everything it needed from the possession the moment they escaped UConn's frenzied first trap. The Huskies were just planning to foul a Duke player before too much time had run off, and were prepared to hope for that Blue Devil to miss a free throw. "That was kind of the whole goal," recalled Mullins, a bussin' teenager who will now be remembered forever as a hero of March. "But then they made a little mistake."