Dan Hurley on Tarris Reed: 'This season’s going to go the way Tarris goes'
Since UConn’s loss to Creighton last week, the Huskies have flipped the script, handling Villanova on the road and then brutalizing St. John’s in Hartford on Wednesday night, 72-40, in a game where the Johnnies scored the lowest points in Rick Pitino’s lengthy career.
Dan Hurley’s team has seemed to find something lately and look like national title contenders once again after a brief stint where UConn simply didn’t
But what does Hurley credit to the new-found spark?
“Tarris Reed,” Hurley said. “This season’s going to go the way Tarris goes.”
Reed, the 6-11 senior big man, finished with game-highs of 20 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks against the Johnnies on Wednesday. He controlled every aspect of the game inside the paint, dominated in ball screen defense and gave UConn a safety blanket to throw the ball into offensively.
This performance also comes against a St. John’s team that features one of the nation’s best centers in Zuby Ejiofor and one of the best overall frontcourts. Reed held Ejiofor, the Big East Preseason POTY, to just six points and four rebounds.
“And that’s a repeatable performance for him,” Hurley said. “Tarris, he can repeat that. And if he repeats that, we’re not going to lose many more games the rest of the way. He wasn’t hitting fadeaway, dream shake shots. He was just a guy that was a presence at the rim as a deterrent and his ball screen defense, and his rebounding and his post position and his passing out of traps — if he does that, this team’s going to have a great rest of the way.”
As Hurley mentioned, nothing about Reed’s dominant performance seemed fluky or unsustainable, and that’s scary for the rest of the country to think about.
“Everyone knows. I mean, everyone knows,” Hurley said. “Just everyone knows. When he plays like this, this is what we look like. We look like a team that’s as good as any team. So we all know that. He’s at the end of his career…
Hurley took a long pause before continuing.
“He’s got to do it. The place that he left, Michigan, is having a monster year. He transferred to UConn. If he plays up to his ability, we can play at the level of the place that he played at before when he plays like this. So if he wants to be a draft pick, if he wants to win championships, he’ll keep showing up like that. If he doesn’t, it hurts our chances and then we’re letting each other down. We always needed Tarris to play like an All-American for this to work, and he certainly did today, and he did vs. Nova. I hate to put it all on one player, but I think it’s all like — when we get that Tarris… He just played with an identity tonight that was dominant.”
With Wednesday’s win, UConn (26-3, 16-2 Big East) controls its own destiny to win the regular season outright or share with St. John’s. If both teams win out, the Johnnies will be the No. 1 seed in the Big East Tournament due to UConn’s loss to Creighton.
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