Riley Sorn, Tallest Player in Pac-12, Now More Than Curiosity
His coach refers to him as Mount Riley.
Stretching out to 88 inches, he is the tallest player in the Pac-12 Conference.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Riley Sorn was merely an afterthought for the University of Washington basketball team, a curiosity who showed what he could do only in pregame warmups, potentially another Flosi Sigurdsson.
Flosi?
An Icelandic import in the 1980s, the towering Sigurdsson was nicknamed "the human victory cigar" in media accounts — because he was a plodding player who got on the floor only after the Huskies had a game well in hand.
Sorn rose from the ashes.
The third-year sophomore earned his shot when the current UW season got off to a terrible start with double-digit losses to Baylor and UC-Riverside in Las Vegas. He played just a few minutes in the opener, none at all in the second outing.
However, Sorn pulled a generous 16 minutes against Utah, another double-digit setback, and he stirred imaginations running up and down the floor. He dropped in 8 points on 4-for-7 shooting, grabbed 6 rebounds and blocked a pair of shots. He altered a few, as well.
The guy could play a little.
Husky coach Mike Hopkins, looking for any sort of positive energy from his guys, liked what he saw in the big man from Richland, Washington. Sorn changed the look of the Huskies (1-4).
"The games before, I felt so small," Hopkins said. "You look at the team, and when he's in the game, it's, 'Geez, we're so big.' Mount Riley takes up a lot of that paint."
Granted, Sorn still is a project player. He gets pushed around some, stripped of the ball at times and needs work on his footwork.
Yet the big man has a huge reach and a big heart, and there's no reason to think he can't grow into that body more and become an even more polished player. He weighs 262, hoping to fill out to the high 270s.
"I'm stronger than I look," Sorn said. "I'm a relatively strong guy. I'm trying to put my body in the right places."
At 7-foot-4, he's three inches taller than the league's next biggest guys, Washington State sophomore Volodymyr Markovetskyy, Oregon State senior Roman Silva and Arizona sophomore Christian Koloko.
Sorn is one of nine 7-footers or taller in the conference, a group that also includes Utah sophomore Brenden Carlson, USC freshman Evan Mobley, Stanford sophomore Keenan Fitzmorris, California sophomore Lars Thiemann and Colorado senior Dallas Walton, each at 7 feet even.
After a redshirt season in 2018-19, Sorn rarely budged from the bench his second time around the college game. His UW season stat line: 1 game, 1 minute, 1 personal foul. Yet he was a helpful practice player.
"The only guy Isaiah Stewart had trouble scoring against was Riley," Hopkins said, referring to the former Husky freshman forward now in the NBA.
Sorn was lightly pursued coming out of Richland High School, just a 2-star recruit. He turned down offers from smaller schools and moved on from discussions with St. Mary's, known for its big-man coaching instruction, to walk on at Washington.
On Saturday, he had his playing time dropped to 9 minutes against Oregon, but he remains in the rotation, using his size to make opponents have to work harder. He remains a serious option now rather than an end-of-the game fan favorite, if only there were fans.
Sorn has greatly improved his standing with the Huskies. He should receive plenty of time when the UW hosts Montana on Wednesday night at Alaska Airlines Arena.
That's no tall tale.
"There was something about his energy and presence and what he brought to the team," Hopkins said. "It was how could you not play this guy?"
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