INDIANAPOLIS—-A multitude of choices loomed over Tarris Reed in the spring of 2024. Some were obvious, some of them only he was aware of. The now-UConn big man was a disappointing piece in Michigan’s 8-24 season that ultimately resulted in Juwan Howard’s firing and he wasn’t naive enough to believe that he could afford to avoid reflecting on what went wrong.
With the benefit of hindsight on his side, Reed admits that he was immature and acted in ways that often didn’t align with the best interests of the team. He knew he had to become more selfless and servant-hearted. He knew he had to get better.
While his former program occupies a locker room down the hall in Lucas Oil Stadium, Reed can confidently say that he’s set out to do those things. For evidence of his development, Reed can point to his right shoulder where a Final Four logo sits. UConn couldn’t have done this without Reed, and he couldn’t have done it without reaching a drastic low.
“I literally came from a losing season, now I’m in the Final Four,” Reed declared. “That doesn’t happen to a lot of people, a lot of players. I give all attention to the Lord. I give it all to Jesus.”
Not only has Reed reached the Final Four for the first time in his career, he’s fulfilled a go-to role for this UConn team that didn’t appear to be in the cards for him as he opted to leave Michigan in 2024. Reed has fulfilled it, though. The Connecticut big man is UConn’s highest-usage player and has been its most productive player in the NCAA Tournament.
Reed and this Connecticut program have represented the perfect college basketball marriage. He always had the ceiling and had shown flashes of excellence. The former Michigan big man had yet to prove that he was a winner at this level, though. He needed someone to help him become one.
Hurley wasn’t going to let anything else happen. The level of intensity that Hurley has coached Reed with has been well documented since Reed’s arrival in Storrs, but he’s pushed the right buttons.
As a result, Hurley can rely on Reed anytime he gets a touch in the low post. He knows that his big man knows how to win, too. That’s because he’s doing it on college basketball’s biggest stage these days.
“I think maybe just a guy like Tarris Reed is just elevating his game for this tournament and changing his legacy,” Hurley said. “Changing his trajectory put himself, I think, in position now to walk away from this tournament. It looks like he's playing himself into the first round.”
In some alternate reality where Reed isn’t taking over NCAA Tournament games and rising as one of college basketball’s brightest postseason stars, UConn guard Alec Millender knows exactly what the UConn big man would be doing. And he’s got no doubts about it.
Millender has thought this through before, enough to describe Reed’s alternate reality in intimate detail. The UConn guard envisions Reed as the main character in a Disney Channel show. Within the context of Reed’s figurative stardom, Millender says he could easily see the UConn big man skipping down the street when a butterfly lands on his nose. When the butterfly departs, Millender envisions Reed approaching a woman selling fresh fruit and juggling her product before winking as he departs from her stand.
It’s a jarring reality that draws no correlation to the one that Reed is living out in UConn’s locker room in Indianapolis as it prepares for its Saturday Final Four matchup with Illinois, but he says that it encapsulates Reed nearly perfectly.
“He’s like a movie character,” Millender told Basket Under Review.
The group of media gathered around Reed by the front wall of UConn’s locker room should know what to expect by now, though; a personality compelling enough to warrant a potential future in TV.
It’s a given Reed is going to smile throughout his talking session in the locker room, he’s going to be the most energetic person in the group. He’s going to laugh and take an introspective second to acknowledge a number of the foundational experiences that have gotten him here.
It isn’t, though.
Watching Reed throw his body around and impose his will throughout UConn’s Final Four run wouldn’t indicate that Millender is onto much. It’s almost as if this is a different person than the big, nasty center that dominated stretches on the way to a 26-point, nine rebound performance against Duke in UConn’s Elite Eight win.
“Once he gets in that mode, he just flips a switch,” UConn guard Solo Ball told Basket Under Review. “Once he gets between those four lines, he’s just a different animal.
Ball lists off all the commonly-used terms regarding Reed’s off the floor character. He says Reed is unserious. To dignify the declaration, the UConn guard labels Reed as a jokester while UConn big man Eric Reibe laughs at the premise of Reed being mature.
A number of UConn’s players believed that Reed joked too much, but they say they’ve seen him mature throughout the course of the season. Reed averaging 21.8 points and 13.5 rebounds per game in the NCAA Tournament indicates that to be true. Reed, Larry Bird, Zach Edey, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal and Blake Griffin are the only players in NCAA Tournament history to record over 87 points and 54 rebounds in a four-game span.
“He’s been able to balance the joking with also being a big old bear and absolutely killing,” Millender said. “He’s been amazing.”
In the fallout of Reed’s generally unsatisfying sophomore season at Michigan, he realized that this would be a sad life if all there was to it was basketball. Nearly everything about Reed’s on-floor life was unfulfilling during those days. There had to be something out there that was better for him, and he knew it.
As Reed sits in the midst of the pinnacle of college basketball, that message still hits him. The way that season served as a lesson still does, too.
“It’s not really all about basketball,” Reed said in regard to what he learned from Michigan’s 8-24 season. “It’s all about the Gospel of Jesus Crhist. Once I really understood that, everything else made its way.”
Reed says the result of his emphasis on pursuing an identity out of this cruel, pressure cooker of a sport was a catalyst in him finding a dramatic increase in success within it. On the surface it appeared to be counterintuitive, but Reed avoiding holding this so tightly was holding him back in some ways.
The UConn big man says he’s made an emphasis to avoid being too attached to the results these days. He says his focus is on refining his process and–more importantly, as he believes–furthering his faith.
Reed’s Instagram bio reads “DISCIPLE,” includes a cross and labels him in the “Church of Christ.” It’s the lede into a number of first impressions of the UConn big man, and he’s happy with that.
The most common topics of discussion when Reed meets the media often relate to his faith. When he discusses it, he’s almost radiating. He wants everyone around to understand that he believes he’s better for embracing it.
They appear to be getting the message.
“He’s just a guy that’s full of life,” Reibe told Basket Under Review. “He’s an intelligent guy, and just having him around us just adds positivity for us on and off the court.”
Just over 30 seconds into UConn’s Elite Eight win over Duke, Cam Boozer drove it to the right block and went up into Reed. Reed didn’t jump, but he was a brick wall of sorts and didn’t allow Boozer to get the ball on the rim. It never got all that close to it.
Instead, the ball ended up in the hands of UConn guard Silas Demary and was going the other way. The possession in itself didn’t guarantee anything, but it indicated something about the chances that Hurley’s team had to find its way into the Final Four.
The indication of the moment was clear; Reed had it that Sunday evening and UConn had a chance as a result.
“We’ve been telling him that we go as far as he goes,” Millender said. “When people see him, that's what they're going to think of us. If he's being big and nasty, they're gonna think we're big and nasty. He kind of represents what we are.”
Millender says that Demary is the head of the snake for this UConn team, but that Reed could also have that title assigned to him because of his impact on orchestrating results. The Connecticut big man has clearly embraced that role as he’s brought this UConn team to another level, as Millender says.
From the time that Reed got here until now, Ball says he’s seen a different level of confidence in UConn’s big man as well as an advancement in terms of the mental part of his game. This UConn team knew what Reed was capable of all along, but now it’s seeing the fruits of the belief that it had when he arrived on campus a summer ago.
For this to be cemented as one of Hurley’s best teams and for Reed to cement himself as one of Hurley’s best individual players, he’s got to keep this up for two more games–which will be his last. He isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, though.
“I’m in a position where this is it for me,” Reed said. “I’m a senior now. I want to go out with a championship.”
