EAST LANSING – To say Tarris Reed Jr. has the full attention of Michigan State basketball would be an understatement.
Because there is no overstating just how seismic a statline of 31 points and 27 rebounds in an NCAA Tournament game is. Regardless of who it came against.
“I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive for anybody,” forward Jaxon Kohler said after the Spartans’ practice Monday, March 23. “So a lot of respect to him.”
But it isn’t just because the Connecticut star center put up big numbers. It’s also because Reed didn’t play when MSU lost to the Huskies in an Oct. 28 exhibition game in Hartford, Connecticut. And even though Kohler and Carson Cooper played against the UConn star four times while he was at Michigan, Reed is a markedly different player in his final season than he was two years ago.
And five months later, he makes the Huskies a much different challenge in the Sweet 16 than the one the Spartans faced when the game didn’t count.
“There’s only so much that you can look at that film and say what we did great or what we couldn’t do. … So it’s gonna be a new game plan,” Cooper said Monday of how much the 6-foot-11, 265-pound Reed alters the dynamic for the East region semifinal rematch with UConn. “A lot of stuff we did then, we can figure out what we didn’t do great and what we can’t do the next time we play them.”
No. 3 seed MSU (27-7) faces No. 2 seed Connecticut (31-5) at 9:45 p.m. Friday at Capital One Arena in Washington. The winner will advance to the Elite Eight. And for the loser – either Reed or Kohler and Cooper – their college career will come to a close.
The senior bigs understand that while going against Reed is only one facet of a challenging matchup for the Spartans, it might be the most daunting task with how he has played over the past month.
Reed has 12 double-doubles this season, including eight in the Huskies’ past 12 games. The St. Louis native, who MSU coach Tom Izzo recruited before he picked U-M in 2022, is averaging 14.4 points and 10.8 rebounds in that stretch, including four offensive boards a game, while shooting 61% and getting to the line 44 times (65.9%). Reed also has 25 blocks and 34 assists in the past dozen games, though that has come with 23 turnovers.
“His game has taken a monstrous jump,” Izzo said Monday. “And with that size, that’s gonna be something. … Reed has gotten better and better and better. And he’s been a monster.”
While with U-M against MSU in 2023 and 2024 before transferring to UConn, Reed posted almost identical numbers over four games as he did in one against Furman. He scored 33 points and had 31 rebounds against the Spartans, including 15 points and 11 rebounds the last time he played them, but the Wolverines went just 1-3 in those contests.
“He plays like he’s 6-11 and he’s 6-2. In other words, he moves like he’s 6-2,” Izzo said. “He can rebound, he can do different things. But he just has great experience, great knowledge, tremendous basketball IQ. He knows how to come off screens and do things. Probably the best thing he does is constantly move, and that’s what creates the big problems.”
Kohler also called Reed “a monster on the boards, in the post, getting blocks, a rim protector.” But both he and Cooper said the plan is to try and wear down the big-bodied big man by using their agility and quickness in transition.
“We have to be ready to go out there and show that we’re not afraid,” said Kohler, who leads MSU with nine rebounds per game and is second at 12.6 points. “I mean, he’s a good player. But I think we have the pieces to beat him and to beat their team. We have to guard him. But at the same time, he has to guard us.”
For the season, Reed is averaging 14.2 points and 8.9 rebounds. But he had the college basketball world talking all about his opening-round tour-de-force in a 72-52 blowout of 15-seed Furman, hitting 12 of 15 shots and getting 11 of his rebounds on the offensive boards.
Reed followed that with a much quieter showing in Sunday’s 73-57 win over MSU ex-pat Xavier Booker and 7-seed UCLA, finishing with 10 points on 3-for-8 shooting with 13 rebounds, four of them on the offensive glass. Booker outscored him with 13 points and had five rebounds for the Bruins’ injury-depleted frontcourt in a game that UConn trailed by two with 16:31 to play before closing out on a 31-13 burst to advance. Reed had all three of his buckets in that final stretch.
“The way Reed has played lately, meaning this last half of the season, he’s a hard guy to play one-on-one,” Izzo said. “So we’ll have to make some adjustments there with what we want to do.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball braces for Connecticut big Tarris Reed Jr.