Ex-Clark High star Ron Riley got taste of Sweet 16 20 years ago
Two weeks ago, Ron Riley, the former Clark High star who during his four-year Arizona State career became the Sun Devils’ all-time leading scorer and threw down some of the most thunderous dunks in ASU history, was inducted into the Pac-12’s Hall of Honor.
This happened during the conference tournament at the MGM Grand Garden. What a thrill it must have been, coming as it did in his hometown, in front of family and friends.
On Tuesday, Riley was in Chandler, Ariz., in suburban Phoenix, where he runs Team Riley Training LLC, a basketball performance company that coaches and trains young players and teaches them to be good students and citizens. He’d like to open a similar center in Las Vegas, if he can make the right connections.
He was in the gym Tuesday.
“Yes, I can still dunk,” he said, having recently turned 41.
“Yes, I can still shoot the 3.”
So that was two weeks ago and that was Tuesday. But when I asked Ron Riley where he was 20 years ago, he couldn’t remember, though he still can dunk and shoot the 3 as if it were yesterday.
In fairness, he still was thinking about it when I told him, because this was the kind of information I wanted to be a surprise.
“You were in Alabama, getting ready to play in the Sweet 16,” I said. “Against Kentucky. The No. 1 seed.”
And then it all came flooding back to Ron Riley, because Rick Pitino had five guys who were 6 feet 9 inches or taller, and Riley said it seemed they all took turns guarding him at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center. And he said Pitino also had Antoine Walker, who was 6-8, and pretty tough on defense, too.
Riley had scored 24 points in Arizona State’s first-round win over Ball State and 21 against Manhattan, which had upset Oklahoma. He scored 20 against Kentucky, despite having all those big guys in his grill.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
Kentucky won 97-73.
It was the first time in 20 years that Arizona State had played in the Sweet 16. It was the first time since another Las Vegan, Lionel Hollins, had led the Sun Devils there when Ned Wulk was coach and Arizona State beat UNLV before losing to UCLA — which that year would win its last national championship under the watchful eye and rolled-up program of wizardly John Wooden.
And now another 20 years have passed since Arizona State last played in a Sweet 16.
This week, another Arizona State basketball coach (Herb Sendek) got fired.
So Ron Riley is proud of having left campus as the Sun Devils’ all-time leading scorer with 1,834 points (he’s fourth now, as Eddie House and a couple of others have passed him), and proud of leading Arizona State to the Sweet 16, where it lost to Kentucky. Because for whatever reason, the Sun Devils haven’t been back since he left. Not even when Kevin Kruger was their point guard.
Riley said he also was proud of having been drafted in the second round by the Seattle SuperSonics, even if he didn’t make the NBA team.
He kicked around the pro basketball hinterlands for a decade with the following squads: Rockford Lightning (Continental Basketball Association), Gallitos de Isabela (Puerto Rico), Arkadia Traiskirchen (Austria), the Lightning again, Alaska Aces (Philippines), Huntsville Flight (NBA D-League), Al Wehda (Syria), Las Vegas Rattlers (American Basketball Association, second or third incarnation).
He threw down lots of dunks. Sometimes Kurds and Sunnis were in the stands.
Then Ron Riley went back to Arizona State to get his psychology degree. He’s proud of that, too.
Would he like to be coaching now? He certainly would. But former players, even players as good as he, usually have to be part of a network to land a decent college coaching job.
Riley’s guy, Bill Frieder, resigned as the Sun Devils’ coach a year after Riley was drafted by the Sonics. Frieder forever will be associated with the Arizona State point-shaving scandal that went down in 1994. Ron Riley was a freshman then.
You know how it is sometimes. Most times. Guilt by association.
So Riley wound up coaching for a couple of seasons at the University of Great Falls in Montana, where the scenery is spectacular and the sky is big but the basketball is not.
Now he consults young players on their basketball futures, and on staying humble as success happens, because he thinks that’s what makes an athlete truly special.
That’s the quote that prefaced his highlight film when the Pac-12 honored him two weeks ago in front of his family and friends, and Bill Walton, and all the other Pac-12 stalwarts.
So tonight, it’s West Virginia that is getting ready to play top-seeded Kentucky in the Sweet 16. If Ron Riley has any advice for the Mountaineers, it would be this: Get back on defense, and enjoy the moment.
Because 20 years tend to pass in a heartbeat, even if one still can dunk and shoot the 3.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
