Freddie Riley, a 6-foot-6, 180-pound shooting guard from Chatham (VA) Hargrave Military Academy, committed to UMass Saturday after developing a strong relationship with first-year coach Derek Kellogg.
A native of Ocala, Fla., Riley also considered Baylor, South Florida and Marquette.
“I committed because of the relationship with the coach that I developed,” Riley said. “He was at all my games over the summer, all my AAU games, recruiting me and everything. Once he started calling me and everything, we developed a real good relationship.
“I don’t really have much money and my mom’s a single parent. My mom really trusted him a lot. It got to the point when we were talking on the phone, we weren’t even talking about basketball. We were talking about life and life situations and stuff like that.”
Riley visited UMass the weekend of Sept. 12 and said he “liked everything about the school.”
Hargrave coach Kevin Keatts said Riley will be an automatic scorer for UMass, while Riley said he wants to improve his defense.
“I think he’ll be good,” Keatts said. “I think he can come in and score the basketball for them. He can definitely put the basketball in the hole. He can score in a variety of ways. He can put the ball on the floor, get to the rim, shoot it off the 3. He’s going to be a perfect scorer for those guys.”
Riley said, “I just want to be an all-around player. The thing I’m looking forward to the most is developing my defense and being able to stop somebody on defense and being able to do more than just score.”
Also at Hargrave, 6-8, 215-pound PF Chris Braswell is visiting UNC-Charlotte this weekend.
PELCHER TO IONA
Chris Pelcher, a 6-9, 240-pound center from Albany Academy, also committed to Iona.
He chose Iona over Drexel, Siena, Albany, Marist and Fairfield.
Iona has one scholarship left for 2009 and is looking for a big man.
