College basketball can be like life in a fish bowl, in more ways than one. Riley Fox came out of Conard High in West Hartford with a reputation for shot taking and making.
It wasn’t long before he lived up to it at Yale, where fans and students jam small, but stately Payne Whitney Gym and high expectations are now a yearly reality.
“What’s great about Riley, he’s a goldfish,” coach James Jones said. “He’s got a very short memory. We played down at UTEP last year, and John (Poulakidas) was out. Riley came into the game, made a couple of threes, then he shot an air ball. The next play, stagger double and buried one. No thought about the missed shot at all. That’s what makes a great shooter, he’s not worried about the last one, because he knows the next one’s going in.”
Fox, 6 feet 6, may forget misses quickly, but the experience of playing in an NCAA Tournament in March, where the danger the Bulldogs present is no longer a surprise, has stayed with him. He scored six points in six minutes, though Yale was beaten by heavily favored Texas A&M at Ball Arena in Denver.
“Unbelievable, it was probably the greatest basketball experience so far in my life,” Fox said after a practice this week. “To be able to make those threes, when I subbed in there were like (20,000), a lot of people there, I think there were like eight million watching on TV, crazy. My legs were shaking walking up to the scorer’s table.”
Fox’s takeaway was the desire to get back, more seasoned, and in a bigger role. Ivy League championships and NCAA Tournament appearances have become the standard at Yale, which has made it five times since 2016 and pulled a couple of Round of 64 shockers. But there was to be a long, eventful spring and summer of work ahead.
Before his freshman season, Fox’s heart screening showed a birth defect. “I was fine to play, but I had to get that fixed sooner than later,” he said. “So I had heart surgery in May. It was robotical, three little incisions. I have three scars right here (on the left side). After the season, I kept working out, lifting. The second or third day I was home from school, I had that done and I couldn’t really lift for about three weeks, then I started with the legs and worked out all summer, lifted four times a week. Now, I’m all good, don’t have to think about it.”
Fox then resumed workouts and added 15 pounds of muscle, growing to 205. With Poulakidas now playing with the Clippers’ G League affiliate, the stretch-forward role belongs to Fox and he has been thriving. Jones, winningest coach in school history, has Yale (13-2) right back as the Ivy League favorite, winning the Paradise Jam in November, and opening conference play with a win at Brown.
Fox came out firing, with four threes and 22 points in 24 minutes in the season opener vs. Navy, and later topped 20 against Stony Brook and Vermont. After scoring 18 in the Ivy opener at Brown, Fox is averaging 13.1 points, shooting 51.5 percent from the floor, 43.5 percent on threes going into Yale’s game at Princeton Saturday.
“He just played behind John Poulakidas last year, so it was hard to get major minutes for him,” Jones said. “What he’s doing in games now, he showed a lot of it last year in practice. The biggest leap for Riley is in his knowledge of who we are, what we do and how he fits into that.”
At Conard, Fox scored a school record 2,167 points, an all-stater three times, averaging 29.4 points, 12.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists. Jones saw a game in 2023 in which Fox made seven threes in the final minutes, including the game-winning shot vs. Farmington, and he knew he had something special on the way to New Haven.
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“As a kid growing up in Connecticut, you hear a lot about Yale, how prestigious a school it was,” Fox said. “I didn’t think too much about basketball until I got to high school and saw all the success they were having. When they reached out to me, and I got to know the staff, I just really loved it, and I loved being in Connecticut.”
Now, Fox is all in on the Yale experience, the New Haven food scene, his studies in economics, quick to unleash a high-pitched laugh and clearly popular with the men’s and women’s basketball players who filed past him as he spoke in the hallway behind the arena at Payne-Whitney gym. He’s lined up some NIL opportunities, making videos for real estate and apparel concerns. Yale’s traveling troupe took a field trip to Brooklyn this week to watch former Bulldog Danny Wolf play for the Nets.
“You can’t waste the time you have,” he said. “You get lot of work done on the bus. All our classes are in person, but the work is online, so you just take out your computer and get stuff done.”
In that aforementioned game at Texas El Paso on Dec. 21, 2024, Fox stepped out from under Poulakidas’ wing and scored 19. “You can’t focus on the last play,” he said, laughing at mention of the air ball, “you have to move on. As a shooter, Coach Jones has a lot of confidence in me, as I do in myself, and my teammates, so having that helps, and knowing the work you put in outside of it is where it all starts.”
Like Poulakidis, Fox can profit from the chance to face the fire of the NCAA Tournament as a freshman. Bigger, sturdier, more experienced, his legs won’t be shaking if he gets the chance to check into March Madness again. Fox scored 12 points in Yale’s loss at Alabama on Dec. 29, another experience with that level of play and electricity.
“John took me under his wing all last year and I worked out with him a lot,” Fox said. “The biggest thing was defensively, guarding a guy who’s in the (pros) now. Your body changes and adapts as you go. I’m stronger, a lot more muscle than I had before, and I feel more athletic, stronger, I can jump higher. Now I can push guys off the line.”
D.C. threes fly in Portland
In his second year in the NBA, center Donovan Clingan, 7-2, from Bristol, has been stretching his game to include the 3-pointer, shooting just enough, about three per game, hitting 34.4 percent, to make it a factor for defenses. In his two seasons at UConn, both ending in championships, it was a running gag. He had threes in his arsenal, but it didn’t fit the Huskies’ needs, as he explained to Trail Blazers officials in pre-draft interviews.
Dan Hurley had a little fun with it this week.
“We can’t rewind, you know, if we let him shoot threes we would’ve been 39-1 (instead of 37-3 in 2024),” Hurley said. “When Donovan was here, you’ve got to play in a manner that’s best for UConn. If NBA people are smart enough, they’ll figure it out with the countless practices they can come to. If they come watch practice, everybody’s shooting threes, but when the game starts we’re going to play to our strengths and play to win.”
Clingan has started 34 games for Portland, averaging 8.1 points, 8.8 rebounds, 1.6 blocks. He has become more than just a rim protector for the Blazers (18-20), scoring 12 in their win over Houston this week.
Sunday short takes
*Adam Giardino, UConn grad and versatile play-by-play voice for a number of teams on campus, has earned a huge opportunity. He’ll be on NBC Universal’s team for the upcoming winter Olympics in Italy, providing commentary on a wide variety of events with the audio description (AD) team for blind and low-vision audiences. “When I speak, the primary commentary fades into the background and returns when I stop speaking,” Giardino said. “So it is incredibly important to get in and get out as efficiently as possible.”
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*NBC-CT’s hard-working Gabby Lucivero has been named the National Sports Media Association’s Connecticut Sportscaster of the Year for 2025. She is the first woman to win the award, which has been given out since 1959.
*So the Ravens fired John Harbaugh and every team with an opening, including the Giants, and some teams that don’t officially have an opening yet, immediately showed interest. Seems like a move Baltimore will rue.
*Something sounds familiar. Aren’t the voices calling for the Yankees to do whatever it takes to bring back Cody Bellinger the same ones who called on them to keep D.J. LeMaheiu? How’d that six-year contract work out?
*The number of UConn football players landing at Power 4 schools, most notably Norwalk’s Cam Edwards and Ben Murawski to Michigan State, would seem to indicate the Jim Mora and his staff identified and developed some big-time talent. And it should be noted that Mora, at Colorado State, has been quick to social media to congratulate the teams for getting them.
*Not a surprise to see Dartmouth (12-4, ranked 11th) on the rise in men’s hockey. Coach Reid Cashman is a branch off Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold’s tree.
*The University of New Haven got its first Northeast Conference victories in men’s and women’s basketball, both beating Stonehill on Jan. 2. The Chargers have taken their lumps in the first year of the move to Division I, but coaches Ted Hotaling and Debbie Buff have shown quite a bit of resourcefulness.
*Jacob Tsai, 5-11 combo guard, is a freshman on the Yale men’s basketball squad. He’s the son of Nets and Liberty owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai. Joe Tsai played lacrosse at Yale and is a big supporter.
*Let the dead of winter serve as a reminder, pitchers and catcher begin reporting Feb. 10.
Last word
Listen, it’s understandable for fans to be temporarily disappointed when their team misses out on the No.1 pick in the draft, but angry? Just how were the Giants or Jets, or any other team, supposed to go about losing on purpose? Order the quarterback to throw interceptions? Fumble intentionally? Re-sign guys off the street and throw them out there? Forfeit? Wasn’t it valuable for the Giants to collect some positives from rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart in the last two games? Really, the tanking thing is just silly, and getting old.