Point guard Andrea Riley glad to be part of Oklahoma State's turnaround

3/28/2008 2:33 AM

By MURRAY EVANS
Associated Press Writer

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) -It wasn't as if Andrea Riley didn't have the opportunity to play for an elite women's basketball power.

At different times, Connecticut, Tennessee and other top programs expressed an interest in the speedy 5-foot-5 point guard from Lincoln High School in Dallas. But when it came time to make a decision, Riley chose Oklahoma State, a school where women's hoops had become almost an afterthought.

Now that the Cowgirls have reached the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 17 years - and two years after going 0-16 in the Big 12 - Riley again is fielding questions about the rationale behind her college choice.

``I knew that everybody was hoping that I'd go to one of the top schools,'' Riley said. ``But I wanted to play against those people to show that anybody can play with the best. You don't necessarily have to be with the best. You can play against the best and get your exposure.

``We have a lot of people on our team who are the underdog,'' she said, ``and that's what we're going to show when we play Saturday.''

Third-seeded Oklahoma State (27-7) will play second-seeded Louisiana State (29-5) in a New Orleans regional semifinal.

Riley said she grew up dreaming of a chance to play in the NCAA tournament, and considering the tradition of the schools recruiting her, the odds of that happening seemed good. But as the recruiting process went on for Riley, some of those schools dropped out of the running, while Riley ruled out others, including LSU.

``They had a lot of guards,'' she said.

Eventually, Riley settled on Miami and was on the verge of signing with the Hurricanes. But something about Oklahoma State coach Kurt Budke - and the challenge he had offered her of turning around the Cowgirls' struggling program - also appealed to Riley.

``Come make a name for yourself,'' Budke told her. ``Come to a place that 20 years from now, they're all going to look back and say, 'Here's where this program changed.'''

Riley also thought about her father, Roosevelt, who had worked with his daughter on her basketball skills since she was a toddler, and decided she didn't want to attend college so far away from her family that they couldn't come watch her on a regular basis.

Hello, Oklahoma State.

``We just hung in there as long as we could'' while recruiting Riley, Budke said. ``She really thought about going to Miami and changed her mind at the last second. We were pretty excited the night she changed her mind.''

Budke, coming off a 6-22 season, said he knew Riley could be a program-changing player. Her future teammates also came away astounded the first time they saw Riley play.

``Wow! She's fast,'' Oklahoma State junior guard Taylor Hardeman said of her first impressions of Riley. ``I'm just glad she decided to come to our program.'' Added junior forward Shaunte Smith: ``I thought she was really good. I thought we were going to be really good. ... I knew she was going to take this team to another level.''

What they didn't anticipate was how quickly that would happen. Riley was named the Big 12 Conference's freshmen of the year last season as the Cowgirls went 20-11, finished .500 in the league play and made the NCAA tournament for the first time in 11 seasons.

This season, Oklahoma State has won at Texas A&M and Baylor - both top-three seeds in the NCAA field - and reached the Big 12 tournament final. Along the way, the Cowgirls received their highest ranking (No. 13) and NCAA tournament seed.

Riley, who is averaging 23 points, 4.2 assists and 2.9 steals per game, this season became the first Cowgirls player to make the All-Big 12 first team and provided plenty of excitement, too.

She scored 45 points in an 82-63 win over archrival Oklahoma on Jan. 12 that ended Oklahoma State's 17-game losing streak in the Bedlam series. A week later, in the 61-58 win at Texas A&M, she hit a long 3-pointer with 7 seconds left for the decisive points.

Her free throw with 0.7 remaining lifted Oklahoma State past Florida State 73-72 in overtime on Monday night in a second-round tournament game in Des Moines, Iowa. Riley missed the front end of a two-shot opportunity before making the second, something her father asked her about after the game.

Riley's answer revealed her sense of drama - and confidence.

``It was the first question,'' Riley said. ``He said, 'You're supposed to make the first one and miss the second one.' I said I wanted to make it more dramatic. I wanted to make him think like I wasn't going to make it, so I missed the first one and made the second one, because I knew I was going to make the second one.''