Ryan McGeeApr 4, 2026, 09:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year Follow on XMultiple Authors
UConn’s Braylon Mullins breaks down his game winner vs. Duke (1:53)Braylon Mullins joins “SportsCenter” to relive his winning shot against Duke that sent UConn to the Final Four. (1:53)
“How’s the saying go?” asks Luke Meredith, Mullins’ high school coach, knowing that we know that he knows the answer. “In 49 states, it’s just basketball … but this is Indiana.”
“When [UConn head coach] Dan Hurley was here recruiting Braylon, he was with [assistant] Luke Murray,” Meredith recalled as he walked the streets of Indy to meet up with the Mullins family so they could go to “the real practice.”
“When they signed him, they said to us, ‘We’re going to bring him back to Indiana for the Final Four next year.’ Well, right after he hit that shot, I texted them: ‘You did what you promised. Now I’m going to need some tickets!'”
Any affiliation with Mullins is good for business. That’s why over at The Depot, a train station-turned-watering hole, they have a framed No. 24 UConn jersey hanging over the servers’ station. The same servers will gladly tell you that when Hurley came to town it was “right at that table over there” where he hunkered down with the Mullins family to try to convince them that Storrs was, as Hurley described it recently, “a small, rural town just like Greenfield, just with more snow.”
That was the brainchild of the mayor and the street commissioner. They tried to go one better than that and have the lights on the I-70 overpass that leads to Greenfield switched to UConn’s colors, but the LEDs didn’t have the right shade of blue.
Not only for him and his twin brothers, Cole and Clay, who are seniors at Central and signed to play for Division III Franklin University next year. Greenfield is also where his parents, Josh and Katie, have lived their entire lives, save for their own college experiences.
That’s where Josh was a forward on the only Jaguars team to place in the NCAA tournament, a spot earned through a 2003 Mid-Continent Conference championship game nail-biter, defeating Valparaiso 66-64. Josh made the all-tourney team.
“We were a 16-seed and played Kentucky in the first round,” Mullins recalled earlier in the week. He scored eight points, but the Wildcats — the SEC champs and No. 1 team in the nation — won 95-64. “My highlight was just making it into the tournament. Now Braylon’s in the Final Four.”
Prior to the Duke game, Greenfield’s most famous citizen had always been James Whitcomb Riley. A century ago, he was the leader of what’s known as the golden age of Indiana literature. Riley wrote with a distinctive Indiana dialect, penning poems beloved by children around the world, including “Little Orphan Annie” and “The Raggedy Man.”
Every fall, fittingly on the eve of college basketball season, Greenfield hosts the Riley Festival to celebrate the man and his work. In last year’s parade, the Hoosiers team bus and coach’s Chevy were in the lineup. Just this week, town officials joked that they might have to make it the Riley/Braylon Festival. At least, we think they were joking.
But Friday, while half the town was at Lucas Oil Stadium to watch Mullins practice, a group of kids followed their moms, waddling their way along the Riley Arts Trail, located alongside Riley Avenue, one block over from Braylon Avenue. That trail is marked by quotes from the poet, painted onto the concrete.
GREENFIELD, Ind. — Sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason: because they are well-earned, accurate representations of a people. Texans love brisket. New Yorkers love F-bombs. And the folks in Indiana — especially John Mellencamp-serenaded “Well, I was born in a small town” folks of Indiana — they really, really love basketball. From Indianapolis, where the airport currently greets those arriving to town for the men’s Final Four with an exhibition in the terminal of everyone from Bobby Knight and Butler to Wabash and Valparaiso, to a state map spotted with hamlets, villages and crossroads that have gifted us the likes of Larry Bird, Damon Bailey, Bobby Plump…
Everyone in Greenfield needs tickets. It’s a town located 27 miles east of Lucas Oil Stadium with nearly the exact same population as Friday’s practice audience. And that town plans on spending this weekend leaning into every damn “Hoosiers” scene and stereotype that the rest of us can conjure up. That includes multiple caravans down U.S. Highway 40 — aka the Historic National Road, aka “The Road That Built the Nation” — just like all those Studebakers and Hudsons following the Hickory High team bus to Indy for those fictional state finals.
And sure, that would have been cool, but there was plenty of Huskies hue on the Greenfield-Central High marquee “GC IS PROUD OF YOU BRAYLON,” not to mention all the UConn stickers on all the trucks around town, a few slapped onto bumpers right next to Indiana Hoosiers 2026 College Football Playoff national title decals. Besides, I-70 was already taken care of. On the hammer-down road to Indy, an electronic billboard located right at the goodbye border of Greenfield’s Hancock County featured an image of Connecticut’s men’s and women’s Final Four squads, with Mullins placed front and center.
Katie’s family has been farming outside of Greenfield reaching all the way back to post-Civil War reconstruction. Josh is third generation Greenfield, the descendant of Kentuckians-turned-Indianians — so becoming a basketball player was predestined. The couple first met in second grade and became pals. At Central, Josh played hoops while Katie cheered, and eventually Josh wised up and — as a 3-point specialist should do — shot his shot. (He did it on Valentine’s Day, no less.) They did a turn in junior college in Illinois before landing at IUPUI in Indianapolis, now known as IU-Indy.
UConn’s Braylon Mullins breaks down his game winner vs. Duke (1:53)Braylon Mullins joins “SportsCenter” to relive his winning shot against Duke that sent UConn to the Final Four. (1:53)
Braylon Mullins joins “SportsCenter” to relive his winning shot against Duke that sent UConn to the Final Four. (1:53)
Ryan McGeeApr 4, 2026, 09:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year Follow on XMultiple Authors
CloseSenior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year Follow on X
Meredith said those words as he was walking out of Lucas Oil Stadium on Friday afternoon, one of an estimated 25,000 people who showed up to watch this year’s men’s Final Four squads hold four largely ceremonial practice sessions. Many of them were there to see a pair of Illinois players — Indianapolis product Jake Davis and Ben Humrichous of tiny Tipton, Indiana, 40 miles north of the city — or UConn’s freshman student manager, Jack Richason of Carmel.
“Hey, even if he didn’t, let’s just say he did. It’s good for business.”