{"id":253634,"date":"2026-05-01T08:20:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T08:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/253634\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T08:20:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T08:20:28","slug":"floridas-7-foot-9-olivier-rioux-picks-his-transfer-destination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/253634\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida’s 7-foot-9 Olivier Rioux picks his transfer destination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida’s 7-foot-9 Olivier Rioux picks his transfer destination<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tallest player in college basketball history has a new home.<\/p>\n

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Olivier Rioux, who spent the past two seasons as a member of the Florida Gators<\/a>, has transferred to UC-Irvine.<\/p>\n

Rioux posted the news on his Instagram on Thursday morning, and his new program soon announced it themselves with this trippy graphic that emphasizes just how big he is:<\/p>\n

If you want some irony, Rioux now plays for the Anteaters — and that’s quite the grounded creature. No one would ever confuse an anteater for tall.<\/p>\n

Rioux, though? He’s as tall as they get.<\/p>\n

That didn’t do a ton for him at Florida. He showed up too raw to contribute to an SEC team that went on to win a national title as he redshirted.<\/p>\n

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Rioux hardly played in 2025-26 either, but his hope will surely be that in the Big West Conference, he can find a more consistent path to contributing.<\/p>\n

The big fella played a total of 16 minutes in 2025-26, making 3-of-6 field goals and 1-of-2 free throws for 7 points. He also had 6 rebounds, an assist, a turnover and two fouls.<\/p>\n

He lacks some of the physicality and footwork that would really allow his massive frame to be impactful.<\/p>\n

His choice of UC-Irvine likely signals that the biggest programs in the country saw that and weren’t particularly interested, but it’s not a bad landing spot for Rioux, either.<\/p>\n

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The Anteaters went 23-12 last season, including 15-5 in the Big West. They’re a quality mid-major program, and they’ll certainly get more interested viewers anytime Rioux is on the court.<\/p>\n

Rioux’s time at Florida may have proved what he wasn’t yet capable of. His hope will be that heading to Irvine will prove what he actually can do.<\/p>\n

More basketball news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida’s 7-foot-9 Olivier Rioux picks his transfer destination originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,2530,30,29,25387,110538,110541],"class_list":["post-253634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-olivier-rioux","tag-uc-irvine","tag-uci-men39s-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}