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Dom Amore: From opposite sides of ‘The Shot,’ Braylon Mullins, Nik Khamenia join forces at UConn
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- Dom Amore: From opposite sides of ‘The Shot,’ Braylon Mullins, Nik Khamenia join forces at UConn
STORRS — With 10 seconds to go, a fateful 10 seconds on a Palm Sunday in Washington, D.C., Duke freshman Nik Khamenia checked out and left the floor, replaced my Cam Boozer as the Blue Devils needed only to get the ball inbounds, maybe make a foul shot to get to the Final Four.
Unable to influence those last 10 seconds, Khamenia watched helplessly as UConn got possession of the ball and Braylon Mullins launched a game-winning shot f rom 35 feet away.
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"It definitely sucked for me," Khamenia says, "You go through a whole year with a group of people, you do a lot, practice, a lot work a lot through the summer. To lose in such a way it hurts obviously, so it took me quite a bit, even when I went into (transfer) portal, it took me a couple of days but I had to move past it because I had to do what was best for my career."
For Mullins, what is now called 'The Shot' in Connecticut and beyond brought him back to campus as a national face of college basketball, the photos of his raised arms having already become iconic, on T shirts and anywhere else.
"There's a bunch more people that come up you now," Mullins says, "but you've just got to take all that for granted and move on from the past. Just got to run it back, have fun again."
Khamenia, from North Hollywood, Calif., and Mullins, pride of Greenfield, Ind., met over dinner at the McDonald's All-America Game in 2025 before their freshman seasons and they actually resemble one another enough to be mistaken for brothers. They are now teammates, through the offices of the transfer portal, and roommates at UConn.
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"People will make a narrative about it being pushed on me or getting talked about all the time," Khamenia says. "Me and Braylon will have those conversations, but he's never like, bringing it up. We'll walk around the gym and we'll see a picture of it and you'll go, 'oh, ha, ha, ha,' but he's never pushing a conversation about it."
With both still relative novices at the art of college life, away from home, it's good to know they've taken Roommates 101 and are avoiding sore topics. Moments like Mullins' on March 29, 2026 change trajectories of the people associated with them — what if Mullins missed and Khamenia did something magical for Duke in the Final Four? All we know is the roads from that moment have led to Storrs and brought Mullins and Khamenia together learn to complement each other on the court for the Huskies.
Khamenia, 6 feet 8, a top 35 prospect in the Class of 2025, wasn't heavily recruited by UConn, as Dan Hurley and his staff had Alex Karaban coming back and had landed Mullins. At Duke, Khamenia averaged 20 minutes a game, 5.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, including seven points in 22 minutes against UConn in the Elite Eight. When he entered the transfer portal, Hurley contacted him right away, identifying him as part of the puzzle that must be completed without Karaban, the program mainstay for so long.
"Nik is like hand-in-glove," Hurley says. "Just seamless. It's rare to replace Karaban. The thing he shares with Alex is his greatest attribute: his work rate, commitment and this absolute obsession with basketball. His competitive stamina, his stamina to obsess over basketball is Karaban-like, and that's like, two or three people in your whole career as a coach you come across like that. He's the perfect architect for what we do at that spot."
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Not that there is anything easy about Duke, but Khamenia seems to have found a basketball and philosophical home in Hurley's program as has Mullins, who was widely talked about as a one-and-done last season, but passed on the NBA Draft and accepted name-image-likeness and revenue-share millions to return as a sophomore.
"(Hurley) saw my fit within the program," Khamenia says. "The things I'm about. We had the same vision of what I can be, and who I want to be. … Obviously practices here are super competitive and intense, but it's super fun here in Connecticut. Coach Hurley is fun to be around, I love these guys. The practices are fast, up-tempo, no standing around. I don't think you ever really get acclimated to it. I don't know if he'll ever let us get acclimated."
UConn's Dan Hurley makes another impassioned plea on hot topic: 'We can't go on like this'
While Khamenia is from Hollywood, Mullins had every temptation to "go Hollywood" after his shot, but apparently has not. Hurley has watched as Mullins has gotten acclimated to this high level of stardom.
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"He's more mature," Hurley says. "He's a lot more vocal with his teammates, like conversationally with him, we sit down and talk in the office and he shares a lot. He's way more comfortable in his skin than he was when he got here. Being away from home, going through all the experiences he's had, he's coming into his own as a young man."
Mullins kept cool, but indulged ever so tentatively in one glitzy evening at Lincoln Center in New York last month.
"I mean, I went to the ESPYs for that shot, so that was a pretty cool thing," Mullins says. "All those celebrities, all those athletes there, that's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. So I had a great time, I know, I didn't win. I didn't think meeting was a thing for me there, I didn't want to be the guy to go up to people and say things. You saw a bunch of people and said 'what's up?'"
OG Anunoby's put back to win Game 4 of the NBA Finals for the Knicks was named "Best Play" of 2026.
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Mullins, 6-6, never bought completely into all the one-and-done noise, so when he made his decision to return, there was no long process to check back in at UConn.
"You can hear all that talk, but I was here, my eyes were here, in this building, in Gampel," says Mullins, who averaged 12 points, 3.5 rebounds despite missing parts of the regular season with injuries. "I was all focused on UConn so I was going to let everything handle itself. So we're here for another year. … The confidence is definitely there, being in this system, especially in Coach Hurley's offense in year two, knowing everything is such an advantage. So I've been trying to help some of the guys that are newer, to make them figure it out. Just taking my game to another level, that's just the goal."
Another thing UConn's new power-roomies have in common is a hunger to reach one more level of March Madness. Mullins' shot lifted UConn to the Final Four, where he played in Indianapolis, a short drive from home, but he was 5 for 14 against Illinois, 4 for 17 in the loss to Michigan in the NCAA final. So both Mullins and Khamenia can be fueled by the way their freshman seasons ended.
"We had our talk about it quite a couple of times," Khamenia says. "It sucked, obviously for me to be on the opposite side of that and lose that game, but we kind of just moved past that. We're teammates now, and our goal is to win a national championship."
