CARMEL — Braylon Mullins didn’t disappoint.
Many came to see Greenfield-Central’s Indiana Mr. Basketball candidate, including those that are recruiting the 6-5 Class of 2025 guard, at last weekend’s Charlie Hughes Showcase at Carmel High School.
Head coaches from Big 10 schools Purdue, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State and Northwestern were among those spotted in attendance, along with two-time defending national champion UConn, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Notre Dame, to watch the talented guard that has shot up to No. 24 on 247sports.com’s national prospects rankings.
Mullins and his Greenfield-Central Cougar teammates played four games in two days at the annual showcase that includes over 160 Indiana High School teams playing games in Carmel and Westfield.
Of all the teams and standouts, Mullins drew some of the biggest crowds of both college basketball scouts and Indiana High School basketball fans.
Even with a 1-3 record in games played Friday and Saturday, Mullins proved to live up to his high rating, and Greenfield-Central showed it will be a team to reckon with during the 2024-25 season.
The Cougars played games against four of the state’s top teams, dropping competitive games to Jeffersonville — who many believe will be the preseason No. 1 team in Indiana — and Lawrence North — on a late-game putback — on Friday.
They bounced back Saturday with an impressive win over Class 4A state runner-up Ben Davis before falling to a fresh Cathedral team that was playing its first game of the weekend.
“It’s fun playing the best of the best,” Mullins said. “All four teams are top five in the state. (Ben Davis) went to the state championship last year and it gave us a little motivation knowing we can stay with anybody. It’s been a long June, but I feel like we’ve been doing well.”
Mullins’ focus this week will be on visits to some of those schools that are showing interest.
He had an unofficial visit at the University of Kentucky and received a scholarship offer Monday.
He has unofficial visits to Purdue Wednesday and Ohio State Thursday. Both schools have already offered him a scholarship.
His scheduled official visits, so far, are at Michigan on Sept. 7, Indiana on Sept. 20 and Tennessee on Oct. 19, coinciding with the Volunteers big third Saturday in October football rivalry game with Alabama.
Mullins said after his AAU team plays at a tournament in Rock Hill (Big Shots Nationals on July 6-7), he plans on cutting down his list of college choices to seven or eight.
Most of those schools in attendance on Friday and Saturday had already extended scholarship offers.
He added that he plans on topping his visits at 10.
“If I like what I see (this week) at the unofficial visits, I’ll take an official,” he said.
On Friday, Mullins had 22 points and teammate Michael Johnson, a transfer from Southport, had 14, in a 71-60 loss to Jeffersonville. Lawrence North beat G-C 53-52 on a putback with eight seconds left in the game. Johnson led all scorers with 25 and Mullins finished with 22.
Mullins and the Cougars biggest game of the weekend came in a 60-58 victory over Ben Davis.
Mullins scored 34, including 21 in the second half.
The Cougars trailed 27-23 at the half and were tied 45-45 heading into the fourth quarter.
Mullins helped bring the Cougars back from a 35-26 third-quarter deficit.
In a 45-second span, he went on a 6-0 run.
He hit a fade away jumper, added another bucket and then finished the run with a dunk to cut it to 35-32.
A Mullins 3-pointer later in the period cut it to 38-37. Ben Davis, on a couple of buckets from 6-8 Tavion Williams, got its lead back to 44-39.
Johnson hit a pair of field goals to cut it to 45-43 and Mullins ended the quarter on steal and dunk to tie it.
A Mullins tip-in early in the fourth gave the Cougars a 47-46 lead. Williams and Mullins traded buckets, with Mullins putting the Cougars up with a floater in the lane. When he hit a stop-and-pop 3 in transition, G-C led 52-48.
G-C point guard Boston Willard hit a 3, on a Mullins assist, to go up 57-50 with 4:42 remaining.
Ben Davis cut into the lead, but the Cougars helped seal it with 40 seconds to go on a Johnson layup on a nice pass from center Cooper Robertson.
The Cougars lost 80-55 to Cathedral.
G-C showed some fatigue from playing its fourth game and also had to go without Mullins much of the second half.
After a third-quarter dunk, he fell awkwardly to the floor, suffering a cut around his left eye that would need stitches.
Keaton Aldredge led Cathedral with 24 points. Mullins had 19 and Willard scored 14. Off the bench, G-C’s Brady Johnson had 11, including three 3-pointers.
“It just so happened we played our worst game of the summer in our last game, but we had a great summer,” Greenfield-Central head coach Luke Meredith said. “We played 18 games and we competed against four of the top five preseason basketball teams in the state. That’s what we wanted.
“The beauty about summer there is no consequences. I can be upset as a coach and wish we had practice in the morning — I’m sure they don’t— and work on things we have to get better at, but for us, this was great to be in this environment. The Ben Davis game, the Lawrence North game and even the Jeffersonville game had a Friday night juice to it. Even (the Cathedral game) early there were a lot of people in here because they wanted to watch us and wanted to watch Braylon.”
Greenfield-Central’s final three games were played in Carmel’s main gym. The opener against Jeffersonville was on one of the fieldhouse courts. It was elbow-to-elbow standing room around the floor with a section underneath one of the baskets with folding chairs for the college coaches — which included Purdue’s Matt Painter, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, Michigan’s Dusty May and Nevada’s Steve Alford along with a number of assistant coaches from top programs and coaches from smaller schools.
“We played our first game in the fieldhouse and the college coaches were saying it was too cramped and they couldn’t see the guys they wanted to see, so they moved the rest of our games in (the main gym),” Meredith said. “It’s cool for our program to have Dan Hurley, head coach of the back-to-back champions who just turned down the Lakers, and he’s sitting there courtside watching our kids.”
