Ever since Benjamin Pierce Cheney established his institution of higher learning in 1882 in the city that bears his name, it has become a temporary stop-over for 10s of thousands.
For some it was a four year stay and others less before departing down wherever life’s road was to take them. In more recent times five and six years became the norm.
David Riley spent 13 years of study in Eastern Washington University’s non-accredited but quite successful coaching school found inside the walls of Reese Court.
He will carry what he learned from a series of mentors like Jim Hayford and Shantay Legans down U.S. Highway 195 to Pullman where last week he was named new head coach at Washington State University.
Riley, who won back-to-back Big Sky Conference regular season championships in Cheney, replaces another overachiever in Kyle Smith.
Smith took the Cougars into the second round of the NCAA Tournament, their first appearance since 2009, and days after their elimination he headed south to Palo Alto for the Stanford job.
And a hefty raise reported to be in the seven-figure range.
Riley, too, will earn more at Wazzu than he did at Eastern.
But speaking at his April 4 introductory press conference in Pullman it was not the big bucks that coaxed him away from Eastern where he first followed former Eagles’ head coach Hayford. Riley went from a player at Whitworth to a graduate assistant at EWU in 2011 and climbed the ladder.
“This is a dream job for me,” the 35-year-old Riley told the gathering that included WSU President Kirk Schulz, interim athletics director Anne McCoy, media, boosters and athletes. It is the “Perfect spot for the way I want to run a
program,” Riley added.
Being in a “college town” as he referred to Pullman will allow Riley to focus on what matters. There are “No distractions here.”
Perhaps, the same was as true in Cheney where Spokane has always been just far enough away for some things but too close other times?
If he didn’t know it before as a standout player at Whitworth, Riley certainly did at Eastern, where scrapping for every morsel — be it money or fan support — is part of the Eagles’ DNA.
“The underdog mentality that these guys (at EWU and WSU) have connects with me,” Riley said.
While at Eastern, Riley was part of a team of architects and builders who did the same thing he hopes to carry on in Pullman.
“We had a group that wasn’t necessarily the McDonalds All-Americans, the 5-star (recruit) guys,” Riley said of Eastern.
Upon landing the head coaching job at Eastern in 2021 following the departure of Shantay Legans to the University of Portland, Riley found the paltry player pantry even more so.
Not only had the Groves brothers — Tanner and Jacob — vamoosed for Stillwater and University of Oklahoma, but a handful of others left with Legans for “Portlandia.”
How’d the rookie head coach respond to what might have been a disastrous start?
“The first year was a total rebuild and we won 18 games,” Riley reminded. “Next year we won 18 games in a row. We had a bunch of guys who were under the radar and weren’t supposed to be good.”
And that was something he drew on from his time at Eastern.
Tyler Harvey was a walk-on and in year four became the leading scorer in the country and an NBA draft pick. Steele Venters was also a walk-on from Ellensburg and became the Big Sky Conference MVP.
After becoming one of the most successful coaches in Eastern history and helping the Eagles in their rise to being the winningest Big Sky program in the last decade, collective breaths were being held in Cheney when Smith left. The hope was that another guy with Whitworth roots, Matt Logie from Montana State, would take the bait and leave Bozeman for Pullman. But MSU ponied up.
Just ask yourself: Bozeman or Pullman? Money isn’t everything!
“I had an amazing time at Eastern Washington,” Riley said. “If I was going to leave a place it was going to take a lot.”
David Riley was certainly not the first and will not hardly be the last to leave Cheney in search of their next challenge.
— Paul Delaney is a Free Press Publishing sports reporter and can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)