UConn men's basketball beats Georgetown, advances to Big East final against St. John's

Joe Arruda, Hartford Courant on Mar 13, 2026

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NEW YORK — Braylon Mullins led the UConn men’s basketball team to its second Big East Tournament championship game in three years with 21 points during a 67-51 semifinal win over No. 11 seed Georgetown on Friday night.

The win set up the inevitable rubber match with reigning dual-champion St. John’s on Saturday night as the Huskies’ look for their ninth tournament title, which would break the tie with the Hoyas for the most all time. The No. 1 seed Red Storm advanced with a 78-69 win over No. 4 Seton Hall in the early semifinal.

UConn, 29-4 on the season and the No. 2 seed in the conference, improved to 2-4 in the Big East semifinal round under coach Dan Hurley.

Georgetown’s run, only the second No. 11 seed to make the semifinal round (Villanova, 2004), came to an end after wins over No. 6 seed DePaul and No. 3 seed Villanova. It was a 3-0 sweep of the season series for the Huskies, who only beat the Hoyas by a combined five points in the regular season.

Silas Demary Jr. directed the Huskies’ offense to 47.5% shooting from the field as he scored 10 points with nine rebounds and four assists. UConn’s depth showed for the second game in a row as Jayden Ross and Eric Reibe scored eight points a piece, and Tarris Reed Jr., who only scored six points, provided seven rebounds and a career-high eight assists. Alex Karaban and Solo Ball scored seven points apiece.

UConn started the game on a 9-2 run with seven straight points coming from Mullins before a sequence of missed 3-pointers allowed the Hoyas to cut the deficit to three. But Ross came off the bench and immediately got an offensive rebound and an assist to Reibe. Karaban knocked down his first 3-pointer of the night, Reed finished strong inside and Demary made a steal that led to a patented fast-break dunk for Ross and the first “U-C-O-N-N” chant of the night as the Huskies went up, 20-12.

With Ball on the bench after his second foul came around the 13-minute mark, UConn used a two-point guard lineup with Demary and Malachi Smith on the court together for a solid chunk of the first half as they held the Hoyas to just 32.1% shooting from the floor.

UConn forced seven turnovers and held the Hoyas without a made field goal in the final 3:19 of the half.

Reed had three of the team’s four blocks in the first 20 minutes, his third leading to a fast-break layup for Mullins, who utilized his nearly automatic mid-range jumper to score 15 points before the break — most since his career-high 25 in the Feb. 18 loss to Creighton. That play gave the Huskies a 9-2 advantage in transition points and served as their final points of the half as they took a 32-21 lead into the locker room.

UConn started the second half with three made 3-pointers on its first four attempts after going just 2 for 11 in the first as Ball, Mullins and Demary each connected from beyond the arc and built the lead to 14 points with 16 minutes to play. Georgetown, making six of its first nine shots, responded with an 8-2 run, but Demary found Ross in the corner for a 3-pointer as the shot clock expired that erased the progress.

The Hoyas cut their deficit to eight again before Reed fired a cross-court pass out of the post for another corner 3 from Ross, which kept the lead at 11 points with seven and a half minutes left in regulation.

UConn shot over 50% from the floor in the second half and didn’t start to pull away until around the four-minute mark as Georgetown went more than six and a half minutes without a field goal. Demary hit his second 3-pointer of the night to make it a 19-point game, 67-48, in the final two minutes.