Walking Tall: UW's 7-4 Riley Sorn Needs to Grow into his Towering Body

This season has been so hard for the University of Washington basketball team. Eleven losses in its first dozen games. Really bad losses. Too many losses.

And then Riley Sorn, all 7-foot-4 of him, stands almost flat-footed and practically shoots downward.

It looks so easy when he does this.

In his limited appearances, Sorn has made 31 of 43 shots.

That's a dizzying 72.1 percent.

He shoots field goals like free throws.

If only Mike Hopkins and his coaching staff could figure out how to better utilize college basketball's tallest player — he shares that distinction with Matt Van Komen of St. Mary's and Purdue's Zach Edey — to win again.

"The games before, I felt so small," Hopkins said early in the season. "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.

Unfortunately for the Huskies, Sorn doesn't have the strength or stamina to stay on the court long.

Sometimes the walk-on sophomore from Richland, Washington, lacks court awareness and easily has the ball stripped from him.

Yet there's still time to make that happen.

Just not this season.

With the UW off for 11 days from its regular-season finale to resuming play in the Pac-12 tournament, we're sizing up the play for each of the 11 players who has received minutes with a game on the line. Ten scholarship recipients and Sorn. This is the eighth installment.

One of the Huskies' greatest big men, James Edwards, was long and gangly like this early in his basketball career, just up the street from the UW at Roosevelt High School.

The coaches there insisted that he jump over benches among all sorts of drills introduced to him to build up his agility and flexibility. He might have made a few trips to the weight room, too.

Edwards grew into his body, with his athleticism eventually catching up to his 7-foot-1 frame, and he became a four-year starter for the Huskies and a 19-year NBA player with three championship rings.

Sorn might be hard-pressed to do anything near what Edwards, but even modest gains would be exciting for him and his UW team.

He probably needs an added 20 on his 260-pound frame. He needs a mid-range jump shot.

Mostly, Sorn needs a much nastier attitude, as if to show everyone he's been given his height for a basketball reason. He's too nice on the floor.

He's far too willing to share the ball when he needs to dominate with it.

"I think my vision for the court and my ability to get used to the plays and predict what people are going to do makes me a threat," he said. "If you try to stop me or double-team me, I'm going to get an assist as much as a dunk."

No, dunk it, man.

After redshirting and playing in a single game last season, Sorn surprised everyone by pulling 16 minutes, scoring 8 points and blocking a pair of shots in the Huskies' third game at Utah.

He scored 10 points in 10 minutes against Montana.

In his finest moment of the season, Sorn connected on 7 of 8 shots and scored a season-high 16 points against Colorado.

At UCLA, he sank all four of his shots and finished with 10 points, his third and last double-figure outing, and grabbed 5 rebounds and blocked 3 shots.

Since then, he has turned invisible again, appearing in a dozen spotty appearances and going scoreless in five of them.

Again, it's been a hard season for everyone, including Sorn. It could be so much easier for him and the Huskies if he could figure out a way to add some attitude, bulk and endurance to all those inches. He likely plays three more seasons, taking advantage of pandemic eligibility provisions.

Can he do it?

Maybe so, maybe not.

Yet shooting 72 percent has Sorn off to an encouraging start.

Follow Dan Raley of Husky Maven on Twitter: @DanRaley1 and @HuskyMaven

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