By ADAM ZAGORIA
Braylon Mullins and No. 4 UConn will be seeking a bit of “revenge” when they face No. 16 Michigan Friday night at Boston’s TD Garden.
Michigan beat UConn 69-63 in the NCAA championship game on April 6 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, and now the teams will renew acquaintances in the Hall of Fame Series.
“You got to come into it like it’s another game, but they did end our season last year, so you got to come in with a bit more of a revenge kind of feelings,” Mullins, who was named after former Michigan star wide receiver Braylon Edwards, said Wednesday on SportsCenter. “But at the end of the day you got to treat it like another game. It’s a good opponent, good team, so it’s gonna be a fun Friday night.”
When Michigan won the title in April, it ended a 26-year drought for the Big Ten, which had not won a title since Tom Izzo’s Michigan State “Flintstones” captured the crown in 2000.
UConn, meantime, has appeared in three of the last four NCAA Championship games, winning back-to-back titles in 2023 and ’24.
This year, Duke and Florida are the betting favorites to cut down the nets, followed by UConn, Illinois and Michigan State.
Mullins opted not to enter the NBA Draft after his buzzer-beater against Duke in the Elite Eight, and returned to UConn for another run at a championship under head coach Dan Hurley, who recently earned his 200th win at the school.
As usual, Hurley and his staff set up a gauntlet of a non-conference schedule to prepare for the Big East season and the NCAA Tournament. UConn will face Michigan, Arizona, Duke, Illinois, Kansas and Virginia in the non-con.
“It just shows that we’re kind of building our schedule for the [NCAA] Tournament and for longer down the road,” Mullins said. “And we got to play these games now just to see what we’re about, what we”re fighting for and it’s going to be a good test.”
Meantime, Mullins is rooming with Duke transfer Nik Khamenia, who was on the receiving end of Mullins’ 35-foot buzzer-beater in the Elite 8.
Asked how the energy with his roommate was after the shot, Mullins said, “I think it’s been pretty self-explanatory, I haven’t really brought it up to him ever since he got here. I mean, we’ve been in the fire since June so it’s good been good to get to know him. We kind of put that in the past, we’re teammates now. We’re UConn Huskies now.”
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