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Dom Amore: The ‘Basketball Capital’ is ready to rock with Sarah Strong, Braylon Mullins center stage
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- Dom Amore: The ‘Basketball Capital’ is ready to rock with Sarah Strong, Braylon Mullins center stage
STORRS — The seasons and the decades pass, and the responsibilities are passed along. The old names, Rebecca Lobo and Ray Allen, Breanna Stewart and Rip Hamilton, Maya Moore and Kemba Walker , to name only a few, hang on banners along the walls.
And down on the court at what is now M&T Bank Center at Gampel Pavilion on campus or PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, there must be standard bearers, the current flesh and heartbeat and faces of UConn basketball.
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For this moment in time there is Sarah Strong, with her cool, seemingly effortless efficiency masking fire within, and there is Braylon Mullins, that aw-shucks Indianan who turned March Madness upside down with one miraculous shot seven months ago. The oft-mentioned "Basketball Capital of the World" is now in their custody and whatever happens this season will have their signatures and they will be remembered for it.
"I believe pressure is a privilege," Mullins says. "So being in this spot, it's just taking it all and running with it."
Both teams are ranked in the top four as the season begins and have given more of a look than we are used to seeing in October. Gone are the closed, "secret scrimmages" or the mundane exhibition games against star-struck Division II or III opponents. The UConn men faced three power-conference opponents in Syracuse, Michigan State and Purdue, and beat them all impressively. For both programs there is ample reason to get excited all over again.
This they did with Mullins sitting out with an injury, except for 24 minutes against Purdue on Tuesday night.
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"Braylon has expectation and excitement around who he is," coach Dan Hurley says. "With what he was able to do last year in dramatic fashion, he's a different man. He's got a different level of maturity, his personality is a lot different, his physicality is a lot different, so is his understanding of things. He knows exactly what's coming in his direction so he is prepared appropriately."
A year ago, Mullins was a five-star freshman among a group of veterans, some of whom had played on the 2023 and '24 national championship teams. The season was often a struggle as he adjusted to the college game, all amid chatter about his going to the NBA as a one-and-done player. Then in the regional final against Duke, Mullins launched a 35-foot shot to beat Duke at the buzzer, i t went in, UConn went to play in the Final Four in his home state, in Indianapolis, and everything changed.
An encore will be hard to achieve, but UConn ponied up enough the name-image-likeness money to keep Mullins from going into the draft, and here he is as the face of UConn men's basketball, one of the faces of the sport, T-shirts celebrating "The Shot" everywhere.
Like Strong, Mullins is fortunate not to have to go it alone. Silas Demary Jr. is the solid, experienced point guard and Colben Landrew, who scored 15 against Purdue, is the new, high-profile freshmen and they are just two of a strong supporting cast. The Huskies are fourth in the AP preseason, picked by conference coaches to win the Big East, and primed to chase a seventh championship for the program, and fourth trip to the Final Four in the last five years under Hurley.
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"You can tell how young we are, how much growth we need, it's going to be a fun year," Mullins says. "Getting back to work, that's the bottom line of it."
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Several of Strong's predecessors as superstar-in-residence on the women's side are in the Naismith Hall of Fame, and several more are matter-of-time inductees. Now it is time for Strong, the top recruit in the U.S. coming into UConn, the national player of the year as a sophomore, to lead in both words and deeds as a junior.
She formed a "big three" with Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, both eventual WNBA top overall draft picks, to win the 2025 national championship, the program's 12th. Last year, Strong and Fudd led UConn to 38 wins in a row before the loss to South Carolina in the national semifinals. The normally stoic Strong let her frustration show in that game, a "never again" expression on her face.
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"The way last year ended, we don't want to get back to that," she said over the summer. "I would say I have a lot to learn from that game. Not a great memory; take it and learn from it.".
In the offseason, at coach Geno Auriemma's suggestion, Strong gave herself time to heal, staying home rather than playing in international events, resting to recover from various injuries. As the new season begins, Strong also has a senior point guard, KK Arnold, and a possible "it" freshman in Jovana Popovic among her supporting cast. But in the exhibition victories over Syracuse, Texas and Army, Strong was the leading scorer and as a junior showed the willingness to take charge on the court.
"When Sarah says something, decides to say something, no matter what it is everybody just gets quiet and they listen," Auriemma says. "The more she takes advantage of that, the better for us. And she has been doing that. We had a long conversation in June, what that looks like, what that means, and when you're younger, you say 'I don't want to step on anyone's toes, get in the way.' And there comes a point when you can't worry about that stuff."
If Strong doesn't say something that needs to be said, Auriemma told her , "Someone else will, and then you'll have to live with what they say." So the Huskies, ranked second in the preseason poll, have to be unequivocally Sarah Strong's team for optimal function.
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"After (the first) exhibition game, I don't think I showed up that way at all," Strong says. "So I wanted to make it known (against Texas and Army)."
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Throughout the summer, as she limited her on-court time to finally allow a sore Achilles that plagued her all last season – and, mind you, she was STILL national player of the year — she called out things she was seeing. Vocal leadership may not come naturally for Strong, but it must become second nature.
"My leadership and confidence are things that I can control," Strong says, "and I have to continue to practice it and hopefully get better. (Bueckers and Fudd) have been gone for a while, so we're a new team with what we have and how we get better every day in practice, so I guess I'm used to it."
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In Connecticut, we like to remind the country that while neither pizza nor college basketball were invented here, we are known to offer up the best versions. When the new UConn seasons begin with a doubleheader at PeoplesBank Monday, the women to play Cornell at 5 p.m., the men to play Gardner-Webb at 9, it will surely feel like a holiday jamboree. And it will mark the beginning of Braylon Mullins' time, Sarah Strong's time with the Basketball Capital culture theirs to maintain 'til it is time to pass it on.
