CHENEY, Wash. — Eastern Washington men's basketball has picked a new head coach, a source tells KREM 2's Karthik Venkataraman.
David Riley, who has been an assistant with the Eagles for the past seven seasons, was elevated to the top coaching position. Prior to that, he was the Director of Basketball Operations with the school for three years.
This comes just days after former head coach Shantay Legans left Eastern to become the head coach of Portland. Riley was heavily rumored to be the front runner for this job. Former players have been tweeting out in support of this hire.
Legans has had significant success at Eastern ever since he took the head coaching job. This year, he led the team to the NCAA Tournament and went toe to toe with Kansas. Last year, he won the Big Sky's regular season title.
In the two previous years, he led the team to the Big Sky's Tournament Championship game. This season was Legans's fourth at the helm for Eastern.
The Eagles are coming off their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2014-2015 after securing the automatic bid by winning the Big Sky Conference Tournament. They lost in the first round to Kansas at the NCAA Tournament.
EWU was led by Spokane native and Shadle Park graduate Tanner Groves who scored a career high 35 points in this game. That is also the second most by a Big Sky Conference player in NCAA Tournament history.
His brother Jacob had a career high 23 points and added nine rebounds.
David McCormack had 22 points and nine rebounds in his return from COVID-19 quarantine and helped No. 3 seed Kansas rally from a 10-point second-half hole. Ochai Agbaji scored 21 points, Marcus Garrett fought foul trouble to add 20 and Dajuan Harris Jr. had 13.
