STORRS, Conn. — Shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday evening, more than two hours before tipoff against No. 20 Marquette, the hulking figure of Tarris Reed Jr. emerges from the tunnel at Gampel Pavilion for early warmups. His frame is every bit of the 6-foot-10, 260 pounds listed alongside Reed’s name on the official lineup card, with legs thick enough to drag would-be tacklers in the NFL and biceps that seem to ripple when he moves. Nobody else on Connecticut’s roster looks like this, not since last year’s starting center, Donovan Clingan, left for the pros after winning back-to-back national championships. And were it not for the friendly smile that is seemingly always affixed to Reed’s face, the mere sight of him would be menacing.
While a handful of his teammates move through on-court shooting drills with UConn‘s assistant coaches and managers, Reed grabs a purple resistance band and loops it around the railing of Section 107 to perform a series of terminal knee extensions on each leg. The pull from his tree-trunk upper thighs strains the metal piping ensnared by the other end of the rubber. It’s difficult to imagine how someone with this kind of physique can be stopped in the low post, especially after Reed poured in 24 points, snagged 18 rebounds and blocked six shots in a win over Providence last weekend — a stat line no other player in the country has recorded this season and one that’s only been matched 16 times over the last 20 years.
But fast-forward to the 12:20 mark of the first half on Wednesday — barely three minutes after he checked into the game — and Reed is getting beaten down the floor by Marquette center Ben Gold for a transition dunk, his lapse in concentration compounded by a foul that results in both a traditional three-point play for Gold and the quick hook from head coach Dan Hurley. When Hurley gives him another chance later in the half, Reed lasts fewer than three minutes before getting pulled once more, this time for failing to secure a defensive rebound that leads to another foul against the driving David Joplin. An early UConn lead evaporated into a four-point deficit at the break.
“I came out flat,” Reed told FOX Sports. “Really flat.”
And therein lies the Jekyll-and-Hyde style inconsistency that has dotted Reed’s first year with the Huskies following two seasons at Michigan. In the span of 96 hours — beginning with Saturday’s indomitable effort against Providence and continuing through Wednesday’s callow beginning against Marquette — Reed transformed from one of the most dominant post threats in the Big East, which is arguably college basketball’s most rugged conference, to a player incapable of staying on the floor for more than a handful of possessions at a time. When Reed embodies the former, Hurley’s team looks like a legitimate second-weekend NCAA Tournament threat. But when Reed’s mindset and concentration are lacking, few people would be surprised to see UConn bounced in the first round, cutting short an uneven campaign that already includes nearly as many losses (nine) as the previous two seasons combined (11).
Still, any suggestion that Reed — or the center position in general — should be blamed for the Huskies’ prolonged dalliance with inconsistency is missing the mark: A supreme lack of depth at the two guard spots, much of which has been exacerbated by questionable roster construction, will almost certainly remain this team’s fatal flaw considering how unlikely it is, at this point, for either Saint Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney (4.2 points per game) or true freshman Ahmad Nowell (1.7 points per game) to suddenly produce at a high level. And with that understanding comes the realization that Reed, who leads the Huskies at 19.8 points per 40 minutes, is perhaps the only player on the roster with more to give right now, in the present. The only player with enough untapped, but attainable, potential to fuel any legitimate pursuit of a third straight national title. It’s Reed who can offer the interior ballast to support core contributors Liam McNeeley (15.1 points per game), Solo Ball (14.7 points per game) and Alex Karaban (14.5 points per game), all of whom do most of their damage from the perimeter.
“It’s tough with him because he’s just such a nice guy,” Hurley said after Reed’s career performance during the 75-63 win over Providence. “He’s such a great human being. I think you just try to tell him, ‘Hey, everything we’ve tried to do with you the whole year is just to try to bring out the most in you. If you start showing up consistently like you have at certain points of the year, you’re gonna add so much value to your career and what life is going to be like for you. Your whole life is going to change if you can show up with this incredible motor and ferocity and violence and life-or-death pursuit of the ball and finishing.’
“He’s so talented that he can do all those things. But you actually have to do it.”
UConn’s Tarris Reed Jr. forces a turnover and throws down a dunk against Georgetown
For months, Hurley and his coaching staff have maintained that Reed’s ability to actually do it on a nightly basis is purely a mental struggle because so much of the basketball talent is already there. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, where he developed into a two-time All-State selection, Reed was a four-star prospect and the No. 35 overall player in the 2022 recruiting class with scholarship offers from seemingly every major program in the Midwest. He spent two seasons at Michigan under former head coach Juwan Howard, including one as a starter, before entering the transfer portal last March — never having reached the NCAA Tournament and having lost far more games than he’d won in Ann Arbor. Reed, who averaged 9 points and 7.2 rebounds per game last season for a team that finished 8-24 overall, was rated the No. 76 transfer and No. 15 center in the portal by 247Sports.
Though spending two years mired in Michigan’s eroding culture might not have imbued Reed with the championship-level habits Hurley demands — Howard was ultimately fired four days before Reed entered the transfer portal — the raw talent he possessed was readily apparent to associate head coach Kimani Young, who recruited him to UConn. Few players with Reed’s immense physical size possess such nimble footwork around the basket. Nor do they make finishing around the rim with either hand seem so easy. He drew 4.2 fouls per 40 minutes with the Wolverines and shot 51.9% from the floor. The reason why Hurley, Young and fellow assistant Luke Murray, who is Reed’s position coach this season, now hound him so relentlessly during practice and games is because of how much skill they believe the junior possesses, if only they can unlock it.
Which means that the underlying story of Reed’s first season at UConn has been all about personal adjustment: to his new surroundings, to his new teammates, to his new coaches and their methods of instruction. The schematic precision and unwavering ferocity that Hurley requires were foreign to Reed, who, by his own admission, developed some negative habits both on and off the court at Michigan. Prior to his recent string of four consecutive games with double-figure scoring, including two double-doubles, there were moments when Reed doubted if he could ever play the way Hurley wanted, mornings when he awoke dreading trips to the practice facility. He never envisioned himself as the bruising, paint-controlling enforcer UConn projected him to be. He turned to the Bible for inspiration.
“As a kid I was always tall, I was the biggest kid,” Reed told FOX Sports. “But I wanted to be a guard. So the element of finesse I always adored. Watching players like Joel Embiid, [Nikola] Jokic, [Alperen] Sengun, just the art of finesse. But coming here, Coach [Hurley] was almost like rewiring my whole brain. Finesse is cool — that’s definitely a plus in my game — but let me go to the simple stuff. I’m a lot bigger and I’m stronger [than most opponents]. I can jump higher. So I can use my body to get easier points instead of going straight to the finesse, the look-good plays.”
Tarris Reed Jr. throws down a two-handed slam, trimming UConn’s deficit vs. St. John’s
And he also learned how to embrace his one-two partnership with Samson Johnson, a senior who averages 7.2 points and 3.2 rebounds per game as UConn’s starting center but plays slightly fewer minutes than Reed overall. Reed said he was prone to getting “a little jealous” in situations when he was forced to split time with fellow big men at Michigan the last two seasons, but now he describes Johnson as being one of his closest friends. When Johnson secured his 10th rebound against Marquette on Wednesday night to clinch the first double-double of his collegiate career, Reed got off the bench and loudly cheered.
With one game remaining in the regular season — UConn hosts Seton Hall on Saturday (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX) — Reed and Johnson are combining for respectable averages of 17.2 points, 10.5 rebounds and 3.2 blocks per game. A total Bayesian Performance Rating (BPR) of 9.27 makes them the highest-rated center pairing in the Big East, according to EvanMiya.com, though neither player is among the league’s top five centers individually. That this is still Hurley’s third-best center tandem from the last three years speaks to just how loaded the Huskies have been at that position while winning back-to-back national titles:
2023
Adama Sanogo: 17.2 points, 7.7 rebounds, 0.8 blocks, 4.94 BPR
Donovan Clingan: 6.9 points, 5.6 rebounds, 1.8 blocks, 6.23 BPR
2024
Donovan Clingan: 13 points, 7.4 rebounds, 2.5 blocks, 9.89 BPR
Samson Johnson: 5.4 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.9 blocks, 2.6 BPR
2025
Samson Johnson: 7.2 points, 3.2 rebounds, 1.5 blocks, 4.5 BPR
Tarris Reed: 10 points, 7.3 rebounds, 1.7 blocks, 4.77 BPR
But precisely when UConn needed its current duo the most — during the final regular-season game against a ranked opponent — Johnson erupted for 11 points and 10 rebounds in what was unquestionably the best performance of his career earlier this week, stepping forward on a night when Reed was less effective. And there was Reed in the waning moments, trusted to perform on the team’s most important offensive possession, successfully executing a beautiful two-man game with Karaban to set up his teammate for a clinching 3-pointer with 25 seconds remaining.
Reed was doing anything he could to impact winning, and that’s exactly what the Huskies need for however long their pursuit of a three-peat will last.
“They’ve got a really, really good two-headed monster there at the five-spot,” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said. “Tarris Reed has been playing his a– off of late. Tonight it was Johnson. Danny [Hurley] is a winning guy. He’s going to play whichever guy is playing better, you know, and that’s what he’s been doing. But when they’re both contributing and they’re both helping you win, they’re a real load for us to handle.”
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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