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NCAAM Men's March Madness Braylon Mullins and Malachi Smith celebrate Mullins' game-winning 3-pointer in UConn's Elite Eight win over Duke. Patrick Smith / Getty Images GREENFIELD, Ind. — This growing city of about 27, 000, due east 26 miles from where the Final Four will be played Saturday in downtown Indianapolis, is known for the 1920s invention of the “Wet Tenderloin, ” a gravy-dipped version of the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich that is as Indiana as the motion offense. Advertisement “We actually just had ‘Wet Tenderloin Week, ’” said Brigette Cook Jones, historian for Hancock County, of which Greenfield is the largest city and county seat. Greenfield has produced Jaycie Phelps, a 1996 U. S. Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast. It boasts former Indy Racing League driver Mark Dismore. Both settled in their hometown and opened businesses. But there’s no question that the most famous person in Greenfield history is James Whitcomb Riley, also known as the “Hoosier Poet, ” whose poems on 19th-century rural Indiana life earned him international acclaim and inspired the “Little Orphan Annie” character, among other pop culture staples. “When he passed away in 1916, 35, 000 people visited his casket in our state Capitol building in Indianapolis, ” Cook Jones said of Riley, who died at age 66. “To put that in perspective, there were 20, 000 at Michael Jackson’s funeral and 30, 000 at Elvis Presley’s funeral at Graceland. ” There’s no question, either, about Greenfield’s most famous event. About 150 years after the Willis family purchased a farm that they still own — which was around the same time Riley got a letter of encouragement from his writing hero, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — a young man who grew up on that farm launched a basketball 35 feet. Braylon Mullins is NCAA Tournament-eternal. And the tournament is still as literary as sports get. The Connecticut freshman guard’s 3-pointer Sunday in Washington, D. C. , to deliver an impossible victory over Duke and a trip home for the Final Four needs nothing else to endure. It’s a moment in time. Braylon Mullins! !! ABSURD. ? ? pic. twitter. com/m N435f7UAb — CBB Analytics (@CBBAnalytics) March 29, 2026 UConn might follow up by beating Illinois in Saturday’s national semifinals at Lucas Oil Stadium, then take down Arizona or Michigan on Monday for the national championship. Mullins might have a bunch more enormous shots in him and a long and successful NBA career ahead of him. Advertisement Regardless, “Mullins’ Miracle” has its place, right up there with Christian Laettner’s shot for Duke, off Grant Hill’s long inbounds pass, to beat Kentucky and reach the 1992 Final Four. Above it, even? That something so iconic from 34 years ago would instantly come to mind was not lost on Katie Mullins as she continued her weeklong project, making sense of it all, Wednesday at Greenfield-Central High. “People keep saying that, and that hasn’t set in, ” she said of her son’s shot joining that one in replay perpetuity. “Like, I get it, I understand it, the whole March Madness thing. But people still talking about my son 20 years from now because of this? That’s — yeah, that’s crazy. ” Katie was on break from work at Forty Financial, Inc. , a family-owned financial planning business stationed a few blocks from the school. She was visiting her husband, Josh, a Greenfield Police officer who has been a school resource officer at the high school since 2020. This has allowed Josh to assist in coaching Braylon — Indiana Mr. Basketball 2025, as the welcome sign entering town proclaims — and Braylon’s twin brothers, Cole and Clay, who just finished their senior seasons and will play at Division III Franklin (Ind. ) College next season. Katie and Josh became friends in second grade and started dating in their junior year, by which time he was a 6-foot-5 basketball star and she was a 5-4 swimmer, cheerleader and golfer. They raised the boys in town at first, then on the farm just outside city limits, which her mother’s family, the Willises, will soon celebrate the 150th anniversary of purchasing. Katie’s uncle, Guy Titus, is the mayor of Greenfield. “This has always been our home, and I think it’s a big part of why Braylon is such a humble kid, ” Katie said of her 6-6, 19-year-old son, a former five-star recruit and Mc Donald’s All-American who had offers from virtually every major program in the sport. “He’s still humble, still very grounded. He knows where he came from, and he loves where he came from. I don’t think he’ll ever forget what Greenfield gave him. ” Advertisement Josh and Katie Mullins stood together Wednesday, in between several media interviews, with ticket details for Saturday still to figure out, underneath a giant video board featuring a photo of Braylon right after he hit the shot Sunday. This was a recent addition to the school in an area that used to house coaches’ offices. It was in one of those offices in the winter of 1999 that Josh took a verbal blistering on speaker phone from then-Indiana coach Bob Knight. Josh was a talent on the court but much less diligent off it. He said Knight wanted him to go to a prep school in Maine, get his academics in order and then come back and play for the Hoosiers. Knight left tickets for him to attend an Indiana game against Northwestern. When Josh didn’t show, that was the last straw for Knight; he called Greenfield-Central coach John Hamilton’s office and demanded to speak to his star player. “Prep school was the plan for a while, but I just never did it, ” Josh said. “Then I didn’t show up for that game, and that was it. That was the last time I talked to coach Knight. I just didn’t take a lot of s— serious when I was younger. And that was something I was never going to let my kids do. Like, ‘If you’re going to do this, you don’t mess around. ’” Josh got things in order in two years at Lincoln Trail Junior College in Robinson, Ill. , then transferred back home to play for Ron Hunter at IUPUI (which changed its name in 2024 to IU Indianapolis). A high-flying, athletic guard growing up, Josh refined his shot and went from a 35 percent 3-point shooter as a junior for the Jaguars to 45 percent as a senior, averaging 12. 2 points. He wore No. 24, which was presumed by most to be a tribute to Kobe Bryant but was actually inspired by former Michigan guard Jimmy King because Josh grew up an enormous “Fab Five” fan. Josh helped lead IUPUI to the NCAA Tournament in 2003, still the program’s only appearance. He nailed a couple of 3-pointers and scored 8 points in the No. 16 seed Jaguars’ 95-64 loss to No. 1 seed Kentucky on March 21, 2003, in Nashville, Tenn. “I had a little taste of NCAA glory just getting to it, and now Braylon’s having a very different experience, ” said Josh, who played briefly in the ABA and considered playing overseas before tearing both Achilles tendons and moving to the next stage of life. Advertisement Braylon Mullins averaged 33 points as a senior for coach Luke Meredith at Greenfield-Central, pairing the physical gifts he received from his father with the work it took to become one of the most coveted prospects in the nation. Though Josh misses the glory days when Indiana high school basketball had a single-class tournament — it changed when he was a sophomore — he has seen no drop-off in the quality of play. “I don’t know what it is, but Indiana basketball is just totally different from any other state, ” he said. “It’s really hard to explain, man, but we just have a lot of smart dads and coaches. We teach the team basketball concepts and fundamentals like no one else does. ” This adds up. It’s all there in the 1987 movie “Hoosiers, ” based on the most famous run through that Indiana single-class tournament, by tiny Milan High in 1954. The primary gym used in that movie, by the way, is in Knightstown, a 10-minute drive from Greenfield. Indiana fans, of course, were hoping Mullins would play for the Hoosiers, if even for a season — he’s expected to be a first-round pick if he enters the NBA Draft, though that decision is on hold until this run ends. Mullins officially chose UConn over finalists Indiana and North Carolina, though his No. 2 was Michigan and his No. 3 was Kentucky. Josh told his son to remove his second and third choices once he was solid on a No. 1, to make sure there was no doubt. And No. 1 came down to coach Dan Hurley. “He’s like me in that he can pull Braylon’s personality out of him, ” Josh said of Hurley. “Would he be tough and hard and maybe a little mean at times? Yeah. But Braylon has been through that with me. I told him there are people out there who won’t be nice; there’s a–holes everywhere. If you have people who put discipline and structure in your life, things actually become easier for you. ” Hurley won over the Mullinses at their favorite restaurant in town, The Depot 1906, where gravy upon request can turn the traditional “Hoosier Breaded Tenderloin” into a “Wet Tenderloin. ” Just three blocks north of that spot brings you to James Whitcomb Riley’s boyhood home and museum. Like the other houses along that stretch of Main Street, they are of late Victorian architecture, built in the late 1800s and still defining so many Midwestern towns. Advertisement Riley still looms large in this one, the state’s largest arts and crafts festival happening here each year in his honor. Riley Park, which could be straight out of an episode of “Parks and Rec, ” is the site of the swimming hole that turned into one of his favorite poems. The museum includes artifacts such as antique “Raggedy Andy” dolls based on Riley’s “The Raggedy Man” poem, and a ticket stub from an 1894 speaking tour appearance at New York’s Madison Square Garden — with Riley as the main event and Mark Twain the undercard. Dr. James Naismith invented basketball three years earlier, and that single-class Indiana high school basketball tournament started in 1911, when Riley was still alive. But there’s no record of basketball inspiring him. “He mentions baseball in a couple of his poems, ” said Marissa Purcell, curator of the museum. “Yard games, childhood games. But basketball was pretty new. ” That’s not to say he didn’t inspire basketball. The greatest of coaches, including Indiana’s own John Wooden, would quote Riley, among other poets and writers, in his UCLA practices. In a 1969 profile of Wooden in The New Yorker, Herbert Warren Wind wrote that the gentle Midwesterner in Los Angeles was “an island of James Whitcomb Riley in a sea of Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead, Terry Southern and Jerry Rubin. ” Now there’s a new celebrity in Greenfield, a purveyor of swishes instead of verses. Right before going on Pat Mc Afee’s show Monday, Braylon video-called his mother. “How are you feeling? ” she asked. “Has it set in yet? ” “No, Mom, it hasn’t set in, ” he said. “What are you talking about? ” “He still had the biggest smile on his face, ” Katie said of that moment. “I still don’t think it’s gone. ” Josh took a run at it Wednesday morning. He had a phone conversation with his son before the Huskies got on the plane to Indianapolis. “Let’s go win two games, ” Josh said to Braylon. “The shot’s over. ” That it is. That it will never be. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Joe Rexrode is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football. He previously worked at The Tennessean, Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal, and covered the Pyeongchang, Rio and London Olympics for USA Today. Follow Joe on Twitter @joerexrode