Mullins skips NBA
- College guard Braylon Mullins announced he will return to UConn instead of entering the NBA this year. - Mullins explicitly rejected the NBA opportunity to run another collegiate season with UConn. - The choice reshapes UConn’s roster outlook and draft‑watch narratives heading into the next college season. (x.com)
Braylon Mullins will return to UConn for his sophomore season instead of entering the 2026 National Basketball Association draft. (espn.com) The announcement came Saturday, April 18, with ESPN reporting that Mullins’ father confirmed the decision. ESPN had Mullins at No. 17 on its most recent draft big board, in the first-round range. (espn.com) Mullins is a 6-foot-6, 196-pound guard from Greenfield, Indiana, who played 33 games as a freshman after missing UConn’s first six with an injury. He started 29 of UConn’s final 30 games and averaged 12.0 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.4 assists. (uconnhuskies.com) He finished with 72 made three-pointers, the second-most by a freshman in UConn history. UConn also listed him as a unanimous Big East All-Freshman Team pick and a National Association of Basketball Coaches first-team all-district selection. (uconnhuskies.com) His most visible play came in the NCAA Elite Eight, when he hit a 35-foot three-pointer with 0.3 seconds left against Duke to send UConn to the Final Four. He added 15 points against Illinois in the national semifinal and 11 points in the title game against Michigan on April 6. (uconnhuskies.com) The return gives coach Dan Hurley another perimeter scorer on a roster that already includes guards Solo Ball and Silas Demary Jr. on UConn’s current athletics roster. ESPN also reported that Duke transfer Nikolas Khamenia committed to UConn on the same day Mullins’ decision became public. (uconnhuskies.com; espn.com) Mullins arrived in Storrs as a five-star recruit after a decorated high school career at Greenfield-Central. UConn says he was Indiana’s 2025 Mr. Basketball, a 2025 McDonald’s All American and a consensus top-15 national prospect. (uconnhuskies.com) As a senior at Greenfield-Central, UConn says Mullins averaged 32.9 points, 7.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 3.7 steals per game, and finished as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 2,158 points. That résumé made him one of the more closely watched freshman shooters in the country before he played a college game. (uconnhuskies.com) Instead of moving straight to the draft, Mullins will spend 2026-27 trying to turn a strong freshman year and one of March’s biggest shots into a bigger role at UConn. The next draft conversation around him now shifts from June 2026 to what he does in Storrs next season. (espn.com)
