Braylon Mullins helps Indiana All-Stars get best of Kentucky, AAU teammate Malachi Moreno
It went like for the Indiana All-Stars for most of Friday's game against the Kentucky All-Stars at Lexington Catholic High School. The Kentucky All-Stars led by six points as the clock ticked under eight minutes.
Enter Michael Cooper.
The Jeffersonville senior guard drilled three consecutive 3-pointers, two on assists from Ben Davis guard Mark Zackery IV and other from Lawrence North's Azavier Robinson, to help the Indiana All-Stars breathe a little easier on their way to a 98-89 victory.
'It's just really being confident in the work I put in to just knock it down,' Cooper said.
Indiana All-Stars & softball semistate? 'Just trying to be in both places and give my all'
IndyStar Mr. Basketball Braylon Mullins also had a big second half, scoring 13 of his game-high 24 points to lead the Indiana All-Stars its 44th victory in the past 51 games in the series. Indiana leads the all-time series, which dates to 1940, by a count of 106-46.
Cooper sparked a much-needed run for Indiana.
'He's won a state championship, so he knows how to win,' Indiana All-Stars coach Marc Urban (Chesterton) said of Cooper. 'I thought we made the extra pass on those shots where he was stepping in and shooting wide-open 3s. And he made big-time plays. That's why he's an Indiana All-Star and why he's going to have a really successful career at Wright State.'
Indiana had its hands full with Kentucky's highly touted Malachi Moreno, a 7-1 incoming Kentucky freshman who played AAU basketball with Mullins on Indiana Elite. Moreno, who will not play in the game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Saturday, finished with 22 points, 14 rebounds and four blocked shots and played all but 54 seconds.
'I'm usually seeing him in the same uniform as me,' said Mullins, who will leave for UConn on Monday. 'But there's nothing personal. We were going up the court and chatting and laughing like we were doing in AAU. I'm excited to see what he does at Kentucky, but tonight was fun going against him.'
Mullins helped spark the second-half run with a transition 3-pointer, though it seemed like every time Indiana would make a move, Kentucky would have a counter. Vince Dawson, a Morehead State recruit who finished with 21 points on 5-for-7 shooting from the 3-point line, drilled a 3 put Kentucky up eight with 11 minutes left.
When Jeffersonville's 6-9 Tre Singleton picked up his fourth foul with 10:26 left, it brought back memories of Mr. Basketball Flory Bidunga fouling out on a technical foul in last year's loss at Kentucky. But Indiana got hot at the right time.
'We had a brutal loss on Wednesday night (against the Junior All-Stars),' Mullins said of the 117-114 loss on his home floor at Greenfield-Central. 'But that run we had at the end of the game just sparked the bench, the players and coaches. We needed that. We made that run and we weren't looking back.'
Cooper finished with 21 points on 6-for-8 shooting from the 3-point line. Singleton, his teammate on the Jeffersonville Class 4A state champions, went for 14 points and four rebounds, but was limited to 24 minutes because of foul trouble. His bucket with 3 minutes left pushed Indiana's lead to 86-80 and Kentucky never got any closer.
Ben Davis' Zackery added 12 points, six assists, five rebounds and five steals. Fishers' Justin Kirby had nine points and four rebounds and the Butler-bound Robinson had eight points, five rebounds and two assists.
Mullins finished 10-for-18 from the floor and had six rebounds and two assists.
'He's incredibly talented, as a high IQ and he's a great kid,' Urban said of Mullins. 'It's been fun to get to know him. I know he was frustrated missing those first couple but he just kept sticking with it and that one he hit in transition was big. He made Mr. Basketball plays. He demands so much attention and he opens things up for other people, but he's still able to be efficient.'
Indiana played without Cathedral's Brady Koehler. The Notre Dame recruit was on the bench but not in uniform.
It was the first win in Kentucky since 2022 for Indiana, which lost 94-90 in Owensboro two years ago and 103-82 in Lexington last year.
'There's nowhere else you'd rather do it than Gainbridge Fieldhouse,' Mullins said. 'They are going to have a little bit different team without Malachi playing but we're not going to take anything for granted. We're going to come out and play like we did tonight and I think we'll be good tomorrow.'
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USA Today
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New York Times
44 minutes ago
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Editor's note: This article is part of the Program Builders series, focusing on the behind-the-scenes executives and people fueling the future growth of their sports. SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Six months after Notre Dame played for a national championship, Pete Bevacqua turned the floor over to Marcus Freeman. The athletic director greenlit the head coach to ask for anything he wanted. Flanked by deputy athletic director Ron Powlus and general manager Mike Martin at a sitdown in mid-July, Bevacqua wanted to know how the football program could make national title runs more frequently than once per decade. He wanted to know what Notre Dame required to win it all for the first time in 37 years, the longest gap between titles in school history. Advertisement But what could Freeman want? Notre Dame's indoor practice facility has been here barely longer than he has. Its stadium renovations aren't quite a decade old. 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Advertisement Former athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Notre Dame would never have taken its football and gone home, but the school was right to attempt to lead the sport away from its current state of barely regulated name, image and likeness money. It failed. But it was worth a try. 'Wherever the bar moved to, we were gonna move,' Swarbrick said. 'You advocate for the position you'd like to see occur, but in the background you're always saying we're not gonna let Notre Dame football fail.' Yet avoiding failure is not the same thing as winning a national title. There's catching lightning in a bottle for one season, and then there's pouring the foundation on something more durable. That starts with Notre Dame's holy trinity of football buildings: a renovated stadium, an indoor practice facility and a new operations center. 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Namesake Tom Mendoza is an ardent supporter of the football program and helped start Notre Dame's NIL collective with Brady Quinn. Business remains one of the most popular majors, both around the campus and within the football team. When the school started a sports analytics program four years ago, it did so with athletes' schedules in mind. Then the faculty made sure the football staff knew about it. When Freeman took the head coaching job, one of his early meetings was a fireside chat with Mendoza College dean Martijn Cremers. But Cremers didn't come to the football facility to talk in front of the team. Freeman went to the business school to talk in front of the student body. Advertisement 'If you went in a laboratory and designed the perfect coach for Notre Dame, it would be Marcus Freeman,' Bevacqua said. 'He's become not just the football coach at Notre Dame, he's become such a part of this university and this campus.' 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When Notre Dame football needs resources, it doesn't go wanting. Some of this started under Brian Kelly, who professionalized the program to the point it could take a chance on a first-time head coach. Swarbrick got Notre Dame into the right rooms in the construction of the College Football Playoff. Bevacqua got it on the right golf courses, counting Donald Trump, Roger Goodell and Greg Sankey as playing partners this summer. When Notre Dame needed to meet the school's 100-75 fundraising rule for Shields Hall — before breaking ground on a large capital project, 100 percent of the money must be committed and 75 percent must be in hand — the development office went into warp drive before the end of Jenkins' presidential term on June 1, 2024. Dirt moved with six weeks to spare. Advertisement Freeman didn't start this wheel spinning, but he helped it achieve inexorable momentum last winter by beating Georgia and Penn State in a seven-day span. The Sugar Bowl was Notre Dame's first major bowl win in 31 years. The Orange Bowl felt like something bigger, the program's most significant win since the 1993 Game of the Century against Florida State. 'The Georgia win changed everything,' said Mendoza, who watched the Orange Bowl alongside Tony Rice, Notre Dame's last national championship-winning quarterback, and Tim Brown, its last Heisman Trophy winner. 'Notre Dame used to think it could win. Maybe it knew it could win. Now it expects to win. Marcus can sell playing for a national championship and everything else that comes with it at Notre Dame. The kids feel it. The players we're attracting feel it.' Freeman stood at the 50-yard line on a Saturday night in mid-June as Notre Dame hosted 21 official visitors. A dozen of the recruits were already committed. Nine were still up for grabs. Before Freeman talked, the players and their parents — a group that included NFL alumni Larry Fitzgerald, Thomas Davis and Jermichael Finley — watched a video on the stadium's screen showing the parents of former players, including Riley Leonard's, talking about the Notre Dame experience. Within a month, eight of the uncommitted prospects had picked Notre Dame. By the end of summer, the Irish had landed 11 of the 12 uncommitted prospects they'd hosted for official visits, including two 247Composite five-stars in cornerback Khary Adams and tight end Ian Premer. The biggest reasons why Notre Dame believes it can keep knocking on the CFP door are still in high school. With 27 commitments for 2026, Freeman is on track to sign the program's highest-rated recruiting class in 13 years. The Irish are yet to suffer a decommitment after watching 18 walk over the previous three cycles. 'You go into the semifinals game and you're losing starters, putting backups in,' Freeman said, 'but if you don't have the depth that you can put somebody in and get the job done, then all of a sudden that becomes a hole and it becomes a deficiency and you lose.' Advertisement Notre Dame could have fumbled away the goodwill of last season when general manager Chad Bowden left for USC in February. From the start of the CFP to the start of spring practice, Notre Dame landed two commitments, both on the offensive line, hardly a position that requires a recruiting full-court press. Notre Dame also lost presumptive recruiting director Caleb Davis to San Diego State. When Freeman tabbed Mike Martin from the Detroit Lions to become general manager — after an aggressive pursuit of James Blanchard from Texas Tech — he rebooted the recruiting operation alongside new director of recruiting Carter Auman, who graduated from Notre Dame during Freeman's first offseason as head coach. Organization picked up. For all Bowden's energy, he had a habit of giving little warning of what he needed and when he needed it. That start-up approach, move fast and break stuff, had worked. It also felt like the Irish were due for something new. After last season, the program was no longer a startup. It wanted to be a Fortune 500 company. So it had to act like one. There are no leprechaun costumes or gold boomboxes anymore. There's talk of branding and generational wealth, ideas floated about how Notre Dame can become business partners with its players. When Martin sets up calls for professors, alumni or former players with prospects, he produces one-page overviews that include other schools in play, GPA, and parents' professions. They arrive in advance. There's even a text chain for prospects' moms. The entire operation feels buttoned up. 'It's getting the talent,' Bevacqua said. 'Fingers crossed, knock on wood, we are firing on all cylinders right now with recruiting.' And National Signing Day is still four months away. Televisions line the second floor of Notre Dame's indoor practice facility, a gathering space that overlooks the field below. During the second week of August camp, the screens replay Notre Dame's run through the CFP, with highlights of wins against Indiana, Georgia and Penn State. Everyone knows how it all ended against Ohio State. The longest season in school history still lingers around here, as much as Freeman would prefer it didn't. Advertisement 'They're valuable lessons that you learn from last year, but I continue to remind them: 2024 has nothing to do with this 2025 team,' Freeman said. 'Yes, let's utilize the lessons. Let's utilize some of those good and bad things that we learned from last year, but you do that no matter what the previous experience was. They understand that. 'We try to stop talking about that '24 year.' Good luck with that. The last time Notre Dame made the national championship game, the hangover was harsh. So was the realization the Irish weren't as close to the mountaintop as they appeared before kickoff of that 42-14 loss to Alabama. Kelly interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles, starting quarterback Everett Golson got suspended after spring practice and the program was out of the title chase by late September. Notre Dame ended that season against Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl. The Ohio State game felt different. So did everything leading up to it. But when it came for Notre Dame's title shot, the team on the other sideline still had the most talent. 'I would point to depth as the No. 1 difference now,' Swarbrick said. 'Our first D-line was really good that year. Alabama's third D-line was really good. It was all the difference in the world. 'Sport always exposes your weaknesses. If your nutrition program isn't right, if your strength conditioning program isn't right, If recruiting doesn't produce the quality of player and the depth, it always gets exposed. And I think the program is as solid across the board as any time in my memory.' Notre Dame will begin its difficult encore at No. 10 Miami on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. It will have the national stage to itself, with a first-time starting quarterback and a new defensive coordinator. The Irish added five potential starters in the transfer portal. Behind the practice fields, Shields Hall continues to go up, windows added, bricks laid. The facility stretches an entire block. Advertisement For the first time in a long time, Notre Dame enters a season where winning a national title doesn't feel like a rote talking point. The Irish are betting favorites to return to the CFP and win double-digit games. If they get there, Freeman can lean into last season's experiences. So can his roster. Whether he wants to talk about it in August or not. 'To win a national championship in any sport, you gotta be good; we're good,' Bevacqua said. 'You gotta stay healthy. And no matter how good you are, you're gonna have to get lucky a couple of times. But I really feel we're positioned to keep knocking on that door. 'There is no secret, no doubt, no hesitation that we want to win national championships in football.' The wheel keeps spinning. Program Builders is part of a partnership with Range Rover Sport. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
