STORRS – The key word for the development of Tarris Reed Jr. with the UConn men’s basketball team is “simple.”
During his two years at Michigan, Reed only scratched the surface of his potential. Dan Hurley and the UConn coaching staff believe there is much more to unlock and are using their previous work in developing Adama Sanogo to help get him there.
Only Reed, a junior, had already been studying the 2023 Final Four Most Outstanding Player long before he saw Sanogo’s banner hanging in Storrs.
“Last year, Coach Jay (Smith), we used to watch a lot of Adama Sanogo highlights before and after games. Now I’m here, learning from Coach Hurley, but sometimes in my room I’ll watch the film on him and just how simple he made the game,” Reed said after the second summer session concluded for the team on Friday.
“Offensive rebounds, duck-ins, jump hooks, that’s what I need to get to. Just making the game simple, getting easy, quick buckets… (Sanogo) was getting duck-ins (with) two feet in the paint and he was turning around and scoring easy. Instead, I would catch the ball mid-post, do a couple jabs, doing a little bit too much, making it complicated. If I can simplify the game it will be a lot easier for me.”
Reed, an inch taller and a bit heavier than Sanogo, averaged 9.0 points and 7.2 rebounds in 26.5 minutes per game last season at Michigan. The statistics that stand out are his turnovers per game (2.2) and his field goal percentage, which went from 51.7% to 51.9% from his freshman to sophom*ore year – not exactly what would be expected from a center.
Some more dunks, with UConn’s ball-screen game and willingness to lob it up, will help raise those numbers.
“Tarris’ biggest problem, having spent two months with him, is that he has almost too much physical talent for somebody his size because he then could do a lot of different things and he ends up having so much variety,” Hurley said.
Just because the goal is “simple,” it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. Especially with Hurley running practice.
“It’s different. I’m telling you it’s different. My expectations were high, but it beat my expectations. Everything from the accountability standpoint, the expectation standpoint, the standard. Coming in here, it was tough,” Reed said. “Learning from all of the coaches has been a great experience and in two months I’ve seen myself grow drastically, so I can’t wait for a whole season under Coach Hurley.”
Reed, who goes by “T-Reed” or “Big Hoss,” – Hurley is the only one who calls him “Tarris” – is expected to help the Huskies form yet another two-headed monster at the center position, which has been critical for the last two championship teams.
First it was Adama Sanogo and Donovan Clingan, the physical, low-post shotmaker and the 7-foot-2 shotblocker off the bench. Then Clingan moved into the starting spot and had Samson Johnson, a 6-foot-10 uber-athletic high-flyer with improving defense, behind him. Now it will be Johnson and Reed.
The dynamic reminds Reed of his high school days at Link Academy where he played with Felix Okpara, who’s 6-foot-11 and transferred from Ohio State to Tennessee this offseason.
“The first couple months, he used to cook me because he was just a long, athletic big, used to block my shot and I see that with Samson and Youss (sophom*ore Youssouf Singare),” he said. “It’s different from the Big Ten. If I beat a defender, I’m going to the rim. I beat them, I mean they’re right there recovering.”
The trio has been working together to get better, learning each other’s game and how to defend against each other.
Soon they’ll be sharing minutes. And Reed, who started 31 of 32 games for the Wolverines last year, is okay with the sacrifice.
“Knowing that Samson Johnson, he’s a dog on the court, and then we got Youssouf, a young guy trying to come up, I knew I was gonna have to split and share minutes,” he said. “And I mean, I’m in a great program learning from great coaches with great guys pushing on me, I could take a little sacrifice in order to play for the best program in the country and learn and develop my game.”
In terms of understanding expectations, Reed was thrown directly into the fire.
Back in April, he was one of about 60,000 in Hartford for the Huskies’ championship parade.
“That was pretty cool,” he said. “I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome being there, like I didn’t do anything, I didn’t deserve it, but now it just makes you even more hungry to get it, get a third one. We’re in a position where nobody’s won three in a row (in over 50 years), so why not us?”
In the portal, Reed was waiting for “the feeling” that would tell him a school was the right fit.
“I didn’t really have that feeling at the other school I visited,” Reed said. He reportedly visited Kansas State at the end of May. “But UConn, I don’t know. First time talking to Coach Hurley I was like, ‘Man, this dude is crazy. I gotta play for him.'”
Working closely with associate head coach Kimani Young, who he says chews him out every practice, there is no room left for complacency.
If it had been a couple of years ago, Reed says he would’ve gone out and had fun during this short break before fall workouts begin. Now? “It’s grind time,” he said. “Coach, he honestly changes your whole mindset when you come here.”
So Reed will return home to St. Louis, where he spent some time recently mourning the loss of his great aunt – “the most powerful, prayerful woman I’ve known my whole life.” He missed the team’s open practice on Saturday but was able to return Sunday morning for the final week of summer session.
Before returning to campus in the fall, Reed will reunite with family and be pushed, in part, by his two younger brothers, Trevor and Tristan, to stay in shape, not get injured and most importantly, continue to simplify his game.
“I think his biggest problem is how talented he is and how many things he’s capable of doing, and I think we’re just getting him to lock it in on some of the things that we really built into Adama…It’s our job to coach him up,” Hurley said.
“And if our coaching staff is as great as everyone says we are, then we’ll get it out of him.”
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