March Madness: LI's Riley Weiss a key player for Columbia

She’ll be a long way from Long Island when she takes the court Thursday evening at Carmichael Arena in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but Columbia women’s basketball player Riley Weiss is built for big moments.

Her father, Jeff Weiss remembers one vividly.

“She was thin and young and a year younger than everybody,” he recalled of an AAU tournament Riley played in the summer after her 10th-grade year. She was playing a year up, facing off against a team filled with rising high school seniors committed to Division I basketball programs.

“She was in the main game, it was a playoff thing, and the place was packed with college coaches,” said Jeff Weiss, who is in the Nassau County High School Athletics Hall of Fame and New York State Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach. “But she scored 30-something in the game and was the best player on the court. After that game, a million schools started calling.”

Riley Weiss, a sophomore guard who played at Hewlett High School through her junior season, and the Columbia Lions face Washington 7 p.m. Thursday in the NCAA Tournament First Four. The winner will get the No. 11 seed and face No. 6 West Virginia in the first round of the Birmingham 2 Region on Saturday. Though lower than the 40 points she averaged her sophomore and junior seasons at Hewlett, Weiss’ 17.8 points lead Columbia and rank second in the Ivy League.

Despite winning the regular-season championship, the Lions lost to Harvard, 74-71, in the Ivy Madness final and had to earn an at-large bid into the big show. Columbia, in addition to Harvard and Princeton, rounded out a conference record three NCAA Tournament bids.

“The Ivy League is a very competitive league, so we’ve played against great teams all year and played back-to-back games,” Riley Weiss said. “I’m super excited.”

Weiss, who will be playing in her second straight NCAA Tournament, spent her senior high school season playing at North Broward Prep in Florida, where she was coached by her father.

“It was a bit higher level of basketball, which is definitely a good thing, and getting to play somewhere else,” she said. “I played on Long Island for a pretty long time. I got something a little new.”

Jeff Weiss, who spent 32 years coaching varsity boys basketball at Lawrence Woodmere Academy, had retired from coaching in 2020 to watch Riley and her twin brother, Ryan — who just wrapped up his first season at Brandeis in Massachusetts — play high school basketball. But in 2022, when the family moved to Florida for the year, he found the perfect opportunity to coach again.

“By coaching at the school the kids went to, I didn’t miss anything,” he said. “The boys and girls played back-to-back games, so I’d coach one and watch the other.”

Riley Weiss, who averaged seven points for Columbia last season, made big changes this offseason, Lions coach Megan Griffith said.

“She grew physically and put on muscle and strength to be a durable athlete that can do more than just score three-pointers,” Griffith said. “Her output has increased by the input she had every moment leading up to the season.”

Key to Weiss’ success has been an increased leadership role. The team lost the vocal Abbey Hsu, who now plays for the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, and Weiss filled the void. The Lions will lose Cecelia Collins and Kitty Henderson, the team’s second-and third-leading scorers, respectively, after this tournament run.

On Thursday, with her parents watching her on North Carolina’s home court, Weiss will look to do more than just score.

“I’m trying to impact the game in more ways and help out the team from a leadership standpoint,” Riley Weiss said. “We’re obviously going to be losing two very impactful seniors, so just starting to try and grow in that role a little bit more.”