Florida coach Todd Golden had people yelling at him at halftime Thursday night to get 7ft 9in center Olivier Rioux in the game.<\/p>\n
Golden relented with 2:09 to play \u2013 and made history in the process \u2013 after chants of \u201cWe Want Ollie\u201d swept through the O\u2019Connell Center.<\/p>\n
Rioux became the tallest person to ever play college basketball when he made his debut in a 104-64 victory over North Florida. Rioux, a 19-year-old redshirt freshman from Canada and the world\u2019s tallest teenager, drew so much attention from the Ospreys that he didn\u2019t even touch the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt great,\u201d Rioux said. \u201cThe support from everybody was amazing, even on the bench and even the fans. I think everybody supported me. I\u2019m very grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about making history, Rioux quipped: \u201cIt\u2019s another day, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rioux made everyone in attendance smile. Even North Florida forward Trey Cady smirked when he measured himself against Rioux. Cady was giving up more than a foot in the matchup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s people yelling at me at halftime about playing him,\u201d Golden said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Listen, it will happen. The time will come.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rioux is two inches (five centimeters) taller than former NBA giants Gheorghe Muresan and Manute Bol, and three inches taller than popular big men Yao Ming, Tacko Fall and Shawn Bradley. He already owned a spot in the Guinness record book when he signed with Florida in 2024.<\/p>\n
Golden gave Rioux the option of playing sparingly last season or taking a redshirt season and working on his game. Rioux chose the latter<\/a>. Nonetheless, he was a walking viral video, from riding his bike on campus, to ducking under every doorway, to cutting down nets while standing flat-footed during Florida\u2019s NCAA Tournament run<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s put in a lot of great work,\u201d Golden said. \u201cTo his credit, he\u2019s kept a great attitude without getting a lot of reward in terms of playing time and opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Golden had made it clear that Rioux would only play late in blowouts, the result of having all four frontcourt players returning. But Olivier doubled down on wanting to be at Florida and welcomed the challenge of playing against Alex Condon, Thomas Haugh, Rueben Chinyelu, and Micah Handlogten in practice and behind them in games.<\/p>\n \u201cI talked to the guys at halftime when we\u2019re up 24 and I expressed to them the importance of getting off to a really good start so we can get some of the younger guys and some of the guys from down on the bench an opportunity to play and to get some rip,\u201d Golden said. \u201cObviously the game was in our control and thought it would be a good opportunity to get him out there and get his first college experience, and I think he was pretty excited.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pretty neat for him to finally see the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans delivered the loudest ovation of the game \u2013 second only to Florida unveiling their championship banner during pregame introductions \u2013 when Golden motioned to Rioux at the end of the bench. Rioux pulled off his long-sleeved T-shirt and hustled to the scorer\u2019s table to check in.<\/p>\n Teammates and coaches celebrated wildly, and fans screamed every time the ball got near Rioux. He\u2019ll have to wait until his next outing to actually touch it.<\/p>\n \u201cSo much fun,\u201d Handlogten said. \u201cWhen he was checking into the game, I kind of stopped him and I was like, \u2019Play with confidence. You\u2019ve worked your butt off for two years now to get to this spot. Now\u2019s your moment. This is your time to shine.<\/p>\n \u201cTo see him out there running up and down the court with a little smile on his face, it was really good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida coach Todd Golden had people yelling at him at halftime Thursday night to get 7ft 9in center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-268569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}