INDIANAPOLIS — Officially, Silas Demary Jr. is 6-foot-4, although he’s been listed as an inch taller over the course of his career. The phantom inch may have been the margin of victory that delivered UConn to the Final Four.
In the final moments of the Huskies’ stunning comeback against Duke last Sunday, the fingertips of a leaping Demary’s extended right hand deflected Cayden Boozer’s attempt to pass over him, leading to one of the greatest finishes in NCAA Tournament history.
It may not have been exactly what Danny Hurley was thinking when he saw a tall guard who reminded him of Tristen Newton enter the transfer portal, but it was the kind of happenstance that can define a season. In Demary’s case, it was the latest apex of a career that appeared headed in an entirely different direction.
Overlooked out of high school, a beneficiary of the oft-maligned transfer portal and, eventually, the right player in the right place at the right time for UConn, Demary is already a college basketball success story, with another chapter potentially to be written this weekend in Indianapolis. And top of all of that, his deflection helped to eliminate one of the teams that ignored him as a recruit growing up in Raleigh, N.C.
“It definitely was a special moment for myself, being a local kid, not being able to get the love being a hometown kid, just being able to knock out a team back from where I was from was a great feeling,” Demary said Thursday. “They had their ideas and thoughts of who I was as a player at the time. Other schools took a chance. I had to work my way to where I am now. It’s testament to my hard work and my faith and my belief.”
There’s no question UConn is happy to have him. After following two national titles with a second-round loss to eventual champion Florida last March, Huskies coach Danny Hurley was looking for an immediate upgrade in the transfer portal. Demary, who had played two seasons at Georgia, was one of the top available players, and UConn was one of the first teams to reach out to him.
The fit is now apparent: Demary, averaging 10.4 points and 5.9 assists, was not only able to get all of the Huskies’ parts to mesh again, but also added a new dimension on defense with his length and aggression.
“He’s a jack of all trades, man,” said Solo Ball, his roommate at UConn. “He can do anything on the floor that you can think of. He can defend the best player, he can make plays for other people, he can shoot, he can play-make. I think that’s what makes him so dangerous.”
A better question may be how a guard this big and this versatile slipped so quietly through the recruiting process, overlooked initially not only by far-away powerhouses like UConn but local teams like Duke, North Carolina and even NC State. Demary was a late commit to Georgia and over his two seasons there grew into the kind of player that UConn knew it needed when he entered the portal last March.
Demary reminded Hurley of Newton, another lanky point-guard transfer who went from East Carolina to UConn and became the most outstanding player of the 2024 Final Four, but there was more to it than that. Hurley never saw Demary as a high school player, but he liked what he saw now.
“Just knowing the vulnerabilities, the issues that we had with our ’25 team, we needed size at point guard, we needed a ball hawk at point guard, we needed somebody that had some of the same traits as Tristen Newton at point guard,” Hurley said. “Just the versatility, the three-way player, he rebounds, he plays both ends of the court. Then the other thing is we needed a warrior. We needed a guy that had tremendous will and a fighter and a warrior, and I think you’ve seen that in the NCAA Tournament.”
The decision to go to UConn changed the trajectory of Boozer’s pass, UConn’s season and Demary’s career. At a time when fans lament the mobility of the transfer-portal era, Demary is an example of how the opportunity to change schools freely can change everything. In the not-that-old days, he would have had to sit out a year before becoming eligible at UConn.
Instead, he was able to have an immediate impact, and that had an immediate impact on his life. The Huskies probably aren’t here without him. There’s no question he’s not here without the Huskies.
“I definitely think I’m the opposite, being able to come from a program that was trying to get back to the notoriety of being a basketball school to being at a school that’s pretty much labeled as the basketball capital of the world,” Demary said. “So to be able to go from that to now having a chance to win a national championship is a great feeling and I think that’s kind of what it’s about.”
Demary missed UConn’s opening win against Furman with a high ankle sprain, and Hurley figures he was at 65 percent in the second-round win over UCLA and 75 percent last weekend. He credited Demary’s lineage — his father, Silas Sr., was a longtime Arena Football League lineman — for that ability to play through pain. With another week to heal, Demary will be as close as he’s been to 100 percent since he was injured in the Big East title game.
Demary has also shown he won’t let that slow him down.
“Silas is such a dynamic point guard, and he’s so tough,” UConn forward Tarris Reed Jr. said. “Doing what he’s doing now, playing hurt, I mean he’s the one that got the tip in the Duke game. It shows how much he cares about this team, how much he’s bought in and how much he can affect the game without scoring a lot of points. He’s just such a dynamic and aggressive and talented player.”
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