UConn men outlast No. 15 Furman, 82-71, in NCAA opener thanks to epic double-double by Tarris Reed

Joe Arruda, Hartford Courant on Mar 21, 2026

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PHILADELPHIA – Tarris Reed Jr. put the UConn men’s basketball team on his back and carried it to an 82-71 win over No. 15 seed Furman in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in a game that began late Friday night and ended early Saturday morning.

Aside from the UConn section and a light smattering around Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, the crowd was largely full of holdover fans from the previous game between UCLA and UCF, all seemingly rooting for an upset. But Reed didn’t let them have it, dominating the game from start to finish with a career-high 31 points and 27 rebounds

Reed became just the third player ever to have 30-plus points and 25-plus rebounds in a single NCAA Tournament game. It was also the first NCAA Tournament game where a UConn player had more than 20 rebounds since Tony Kimball brought down 29 in 1965.

Alex Karaban, now 14-1 in March Madness over his career, stepped up when the Huskies were looking for a secondary scorer and found 15 of his 22 points in the second half. Freshman Braylon Mullins scored 12 points despite shooting 0-for-8 from beyond the arc, and Solo Ball added nine points despite his 1-for-6 effort from deep. Malachi Smith, making his first UConn start in place of the injured Silas Demary Jr., dished seven assists with just one turnover. Demary and Jaylin Stewart were ruled out shortly before the game tipped.

UConn, the No. 2 seed now 30-5 on the year, will meet No. 7 seed UCLA in the Round of 32 on Sunday in a game that is scheduled to tip around 8:45 p.m.

The program is now 73-33 all-time in the NCAA Tournament and 16-5 under coach Dan Hurley as Furman fell to 2-9.

UConn got what it wanted to start the game, making five of its first six shots from the field. Karaban became the program’s career leader in 3-pointers made with a triple that gave the Huskies a 12-4 lead just three and a half minutes into the game. But Alex Wilkins, Furman’s freshman sensation point guard, made back-to-back 3s to get the Paladins going.

Wilkins, an under-recruited 6-foot-5 guard out of Mattapan, Massachusetts, scored or assisted on Furman’s first 13 points. He finished with 21 points on 8-for-15 shooting.

Alec Millender saw some early action with Demary out and scored his first points since Dec. 21 after Jayden Ross dove for a steal and flipped it ahead for a transition layup through contact, which hit off the top of the backboard and fell in. But UConn’s defense continued to struggle containing Wilkins and the Paladins took a one-point lead from the foul line 10 minutes in.

Furman had no answer for Reed, who was up to 13 points and 13 rebounds after just 11 minutes on the court and went on a personal 8-0 run to put the Huskies back up by seven. But the Paladins shot 6-for-12 from beyond the arc to UConn’s miserable 1-for-14. The Huskies didn’t hold for the last shot of the half and allowed Furman senior big Charles Johnston, a 28% 3-point shooter on the year, to nail one on a runout to beat the buzzer and cut the Furman deficit to four points, 40-36, at the break.

UConn’s streak of 14-consecutive misses to close the half came to a halt with a triple from Ball in front of the team’s bench. Karaban hit his second of the game from the top of the key and then finished a transition layup after a steal from Smith to give the Huskies their first double-digit lead of the game, 50-40, just two and a half minutes into the second half.

It never got much larger.

Tom House (21 points, 4-for-9 from 3) kept Furman close with his 3-point shooting and Ben Vander Wal, the only player left from the Paladins team that upset No. 4 seed Virginia in the 2023 tournament, finished a three-point play under the basket and later hit a free throw that cut the difference to just five with less than six minutes to play.

But UConn held Furman without scoring for more than five minutes and had one possession on offense that featured three offensive rebounds from Reed, resulting in a 3-pointer from Karaban that pushed the Huskies’ lead to 11 with two minutes to play. The lead grew to as many as 14 points in the final minute.

The UConn crowd chanted “TAR-RIS REED” as he was interviewed alongside Hurley postgame.