Father serves as driving force
Roosevelt Riley still coaches his daughter Andrea from a distance
Roosevelt Riley still coaches his daughter Andrea from a distance

By Jenni Carlson

Published: March 12, 2008

Roosevelt Riley spotted the star of the game from across the still buzzing arena.

He had watched the firecracker guard spark a Bedlam blowout and ignite a sellout crowd. Everyone was awed by the big number on her stat line — 45 points — but not Riley.

What he liked best were zero turnovers in 39 minutes.

As Oklahoma State point guard Andrea Riley hurried past her father to a radio interview that January afternoon, he winked.

Winked.

Her daddy had never done anything like that. Not when she won a state championship at Dallas Lincoln High School. Not when she signed with OSU. Not when she led the Cowgirls to the NCAA Tournament as a freshman.

Not ever.

He always finds something wrong.

"But she had that game,” Roosevelt said her Bedlam performance, "there was very little I could say.”

Andrea said, "You could see it in his eyes just how proud he was. He gave me a hug and a kiss. He was on a roll that day.”

Want to know how Andrea Riley became one of the nation's most dynamic point guards? How she stood tall despite being only 5-foot-5? How she turned a down-and-out program into a contender heading into today's Big 12 Tournament opener?

Look no farther than her father.

Roosevelt Riley has coached summer basketball in the Dallas area for almost two decades, turning out hundreds of college players and giving hundreds more girls the opportunity to play. The personal bodyguard to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has cultivated basketball success with a tough-love approach that is more tough than love.

"I do not give compliments to any kid who plays for me, even my daughter,” he said. "I expect you do good.”

With that, the coach comes out.

"If you're sitting there wanting me to pat you on the back and tell you that you did a good job, then you got the wrong coach. My job is not to tell you what you do well. As a coach, my job is to tell you what you don't know.”

His little girl leads the Big 12 in scoring, averaging 22.8 points, besting everyone else in the league by more than four points a game. She ranks in the top five in assists and steals, too.

The college basketball world sees Andrea Riley as one of the nation's best.

Roosevelt Riley sees a work in progress.

She would mimic the drills her daddy was teaching, dribbling or backpedaling or shooting on the sidelines. Eventually, she would run right into the middle of the fray even though the players were three or four times her age. Three or four times her size, too.

"OK, baby,” Roosevelt Riley would say, pulling Andrea aside. "You've got to go over there.”

She would pout.

"I'm not too small!”

Her size — or lack thereof — was never an issue with her father. At 5-foot-8, he played basketball at Northern Montana and Dallas Baptist, then had a short stint with the Harlem Globetrotters.

Riley's mother had athletic success, too. Angela Smith played high school basketball, softball and volleyball, then landed a college volleyball scholarship.

Andrea was 6 when she first played organized basketball on a team with girls who 9 and 10.

Roosevelt always put Andrea on teams with older players.

One time, playing against eighth and ninth graders as a fifth grader, Andrea had the ball stolen. Roosevelt benched her.

The next day, he awoke to a tap on the shoulder at 6:30 in the morning.

"What's wrong?” he started. "Is the house on fire? Is one of the kids sick?”

Instead, he looked and saw Andrea. She wanted to run, then do pushups, sit-ups and ball handling drills.

But that wasn't all. Roosevelt had this football blocking shield, and Andrea wanted him to hound her as she drove to the basket.

"I can't be mad at what he says,” Andrea said now almost a decade later. "I have to listen to him because he knows what he's talking about.

"He's the one who taught me and put me through the stages ... to become a player.”

She was ready to become a Miami Hurricane.

Then the Texas all-stater realized that she didn't want different. She wanted to play for a coach that was like her dad. Demanding. Strict. Uncompromising.

Riley didn't want less tough love.

She wanted more.

That made Oklahoma State perfect. Cowgirl coach Kurt Budke knew he'd landed someone as driven as him. He scouted and recruited players from her dad's teams for more than a decade and saw the demands put on Andrea.

"Anybody that knows Roosevelt knows that he has taken care of so many kids,” Budke said. "But he was always very tough on her. That has helped her ... compete in the Big 12. She already had a tough mind and a tough body.”

Roosevelt made sure of that.

"What I did was I treated her like another player on that basketball court,” he said, "and I was hard on her.”

He'd scream and yell and get in her face. When she was younger, it made her cry, but she grew to expect it, accept it, even welcome it.

The times her daddy didn't talk to her were the worst.

He drove her without driving her away, and Roosevelt believes that's because he didn't take basketball off the court.

"Once we'd get in that car to go home ... it was over,” he said. "What I did was I allowed Andrea to want to talk about it. The only time I took it off the court is when she wanted to talk.”

Now, father and daughter talk every day.

Her free throws. Her turnovers. Her leadership.

Yet, he sees her potential, too.

"Andrea is a part of every one of those kids that's come from my program,” said Roosevelt, who's even had a few play in the WNBA. "If you could get all those girls to do everything well at the same time, you would have Andrea Riley.”

That might be the closest the father ever comes to complimenting the daughter.

"I can hear him in my head all the time,” Andrea said. "I trust what my daddy says because everything he said has come true.”

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