How Dan Hurley drove UConn's Tarris Reed Jr. to his breaking point and a matchup against former team

UConn's starting center will be making history when he faces his former team, Michigan, in Monday's national title game

David Cobb

Apr 5, 2026

5:01 pm ET

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8 min read

Getty Images

INDIANAPOLIS -- Contained in the pages of Tarris Reed Jr.'s journal from a year ago are the reflections of a conflicted man. Coming off what he described as one of the "hardest years of my life," UConn's senior center found himself at a crossroads.

Teammates -- both past and present -- describe Reed as a light. But that light was dimmer than usual as Reed mulled whether he should return to the Huskies in 2025-26 for his final season of college basketball.

"It was me and the Lord, man," Reed said. "There were days where, after that season, I'm in my room just crying, 'what the heck do I do?' I'm writing in my journal, and I'm trying to think, 'Do I stay? Do I go?'"

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UConn's championship expectations were attractive to Reed a year earlier when he entered the transfer portal following Michigan's 8-24 season. The Huskies were coming off back-to-back national championships while the Wolverines were undergoing the coaching transition from Juwan Howard to Dusty May.

But that winning culture, which attracted Reed to UConn, also drove him to a breaking point. Huskies coach Dan Hurley rode Reed so hard that it nearly drove him away from the Huskies and from the history that will be made Monday night.

When Reed and the No. 2 seed Huskies take on No. 1 seed Michigan inside Lucas Oil Stadium with a national championship on the line, it will mark the first time in at least 20 years that a player has faced his former team in a Final Four game. It's potentially the first time in college basketball history that a player will face his former team in the national title game.

And Reed isn't just any player. He has blossomed into an outright star during the NCAA Tournament and will be firmly in the mix for Final Four Most Outstanding Player if the Huskies can upset his former squad on the sport's biggest stage.

"I started my career at Michigan, and now I'm about to play them in my final game of college basketball," Reed said. "I never would have thought that would happen in a million years. How cool a blessing is that?"

The blessing that almost never happened

Two distinct crossroads led to this historic meeting between Reed and a Michigan team that still features three of his former Wolverines teammates. The first came amidst the Howard-to-May transition with the Wolverines.

Michigan walk-on Harrison Hochberg remembers it well. Hochberg and others, such as key current players Nimari Burnett and Will Tschetter, were going to stick around with May. Others, including Reed, were planning to leave.

As Reed recalled on Sunday, May was "upfront and truthful" about who he planned to bring into Michigan's new-look frontcourt for the 2024-25 season. Seven-footers like Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf would be entering to anchor the interior for May's first squad in Ann Arbor.

"I think the writing was on the wall then that this probably can't work with three seven-footers," May said. "It would've been fun to try in hindsight, but, yeah, at that point it was well known that he was going to look at something different."

As Reed recalled Sunday, "it was no bad blood or no bad intentions behind it or anything."

With Reed being pursued to play key roles for other big-time programs, it made sense for both sides to part ways. Where to go next was the question.

"I remember when he was considering places, and he and I were pretty close," Hochberg told CBS Sports. "And I remember sitting in his car with him, debating between a few schools, and I was like, 'I think you should go to UConn.' You knew he was going to thrive there just based on Hurley toughening him up, which he did."

Drawn to UConn's winning culture and the chance to be part of a potentially historic three-peat, Reed saw what Hochberg saw. He had already studied the tape of 2023 Final Four Most Outstanding Player, Adama Sanogo, who was smaller than the 6-foot-10 Reed.

"Imagine," Reed said, "I'm three inches taller with a longer wing span, what could I do? Adama really set the tone for a lot of recruits like me, being able to see what he's done here."

> Tarris Reed going right to the rack! pic.twitter.com/yW4VsduweA

— CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 (@CBSSportsCBB) March 28, 2026

Before Reed blossomed into a Sanogo-level star, he took some devastating blows. UConn was losing 7-foot-2 superstar Donovan Clingan to the NBA Draft after the 2023-24 season, and there would be no easing into things for Reed.

Going from an 8-24 team into a program coming off a 37-3 campaign marked by a second consecutive title brought challenges from the start.

"I feel like wa