A Moment of Truth: Why CBS's Viral UConn Crowd Shot Is One of Sports' All-Time Greatest TV Images

Where did you look first?

Did your eyes dart to UConn coach Dan Hurley? He’s the best coach of the 2020s, renowned for his comic arrogance—but he looks anxious, even nervous, as he surrenders his fate to a freshman. What about legendary actor Bill Murray, the father of Huskies assistant and Boston College coach-to-be Luke Murray? Here, Carl Spackler and Phil Connors can’t act any part other than that of the stoic.

Sure, there’s ex-UConn forward Rudy Gay, and Hurley’s father Bob—a fellow coaching icon. But there are also ordinary fans offering prayers, two young boys finding their view blocked by Gay, the Huskies’ bench verging on hyperventilation, and at least one spectator taking video.

The cover photo of this article was a bit of an accident. CBS, which aired UConn’s transcendent 73–72 comeback win over Duke in the Elite Eight Sunday, stuck footage of the Huskies watching freshman guard Braylon Mullins’ go-ahead shot in a YouTube video depicting said shot from 10 different angles. An observant UConn fan—@patlenehan14 on X—had the presence of mind to screenshot the video at just the right time.

My favorite image from last night pic.twitter.com/yrZe9uaY3i
— Pat LeneFan (@patlenehan14) March 30, 2026

What we got out of this chain of events is, put as plainly as possible, one of the greatest sports images ever captured on American television.

It is rare for an image in sports, and particularly in televised sports, to have no secrets from the viewer. That’s what sets apart the images that last. Babe Ruth, ill with throat cancer, hears Yankee Stadium shower him with adulation. Muhammad Ali proclaims his victory over Sonny Liston. Megan Rapinoe basks in the United States’ women’s soccer dominance. While these photos are not crowd shots like Sunday’s was, the athletes’ triumphs and agonies are ours.

So it is with Hurley, Murray and the motley crew of individuals that tailed the Huskies to Washington, D.C. as they continued their bid for a third national title in four years. Some were around in 2023 and 2024, when UConn bested all comers and reinvented men’s college hoops in its image. Some, like Gay, were around long before. Some, like the young children watching, may be new to the Huskies’ world this year. That’s alright—so was Mullins.

The point is that they are all watching the flight of Mullins’ shot, as viewers at home were, and regardless of their station in life they are in a state of utter powerlessness. If Hurley, once a guard for Seton Hall, were asked by some cosmic entity to suit up in uniform and dunk Mullins’ shot to tie the game—we can see that he would do it. Murray is thought to be worth around $180 million, and he has no more domain over what is about to happen than Joe Schmo in Danbury, Conn.

Our ability to watch sports whenever, wherever is something we take for granted. College basketball has been televised in some form or fashion since the 1940 season, meaning that any fans under the age of 86—that includes you, Bill Raftery!—do not remember the sport without the camera lights. This century, social media has introduced yet another new barrier between the viewer and the reality of the on-court action.

What this image hearkens back to is a time—it feels almost mythical now—when the only way to see a college basketball game was to see a college basketball game. Yes, several fans here in all likelihood paid through their noses for their seats—but several are also family and friends of the participants. This is a picture you can find anywhere in the world when a game is on the line. It could be a cricket match in Chennai, or a rugby match in Wellington, or a soccer game in Quito. Someone, somewhere, will always be watching and holding their breath.

There is one more element of the picture that sets it apart from similar well-captured recent sporting events like, for instance, Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard’s famous shot against the 76ers in 2019.

In the entire Altmanesque collage, as many astute observers pointed out, only one person is filming.

Anyone who watched the game Sunday knows why: the Blue Devils led 72–70 when the sequence that ended with Mullins’ shot began. At that point, there was no reason to have your phone out expecting an all-time buzzer beater. All Duke guard Cayden Boozer—so sharp all afternoon—had to do was break UConn’s press. He did not and all hell broke loose, rendering fans in the stands unable to produce their phones lest they miss the game’s ending.

In 1999, SI icon Gary Smith wrote a famous story for this magazine called “Moment of Truth,” in which he submitted that a photo of TCU’s football team before the 1957 Cotton Bowl was the greatest sports image of the 20th century. It was a photo that told many stories—about where the United States had been, and about where it would go in the years to come.

As long as America continues to love basketball, this image will endure. In an era when it’s easier than ever to be fooled by a fake image, a few dozen individuals came together to tell an absolute truth. Each, from Hurley to (indirectly) the audience’s toddlers, arrived at Capital One Arena Sunday with the hope that they would see and be a part of something bigger than themselves.

It’s lucky for the rest of us that we were keeping an eye out when they did. Because they’re all looking at the same orange object, and a frame later that object is starting to descend, toward a real destination in a synthetic world.

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