He barely plays. He wears size 20 shoes. And somehow, he has become the most beloved player in the NCAA Tournament.
Olivier Rioux, a redshirt freshman center for the No. 1 seed Florida Gators, is the tallest player in college basketball history at 7 feet, 9 inches. The Canadian-born 20-year-old, who held the Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest teenager before his recent birthday, has logged just 13 minutes of action across 10 games this season, and yet, when Florida goes up big late in games, the crowd chants his name louder than anyone else’s on the floor.
Friday night was no different. With the Gators cruising to a 114-55 first-round rout of No. 16 Prairie View A&M at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, which the Associated Press reported as the second-largest margin of victory in NCAA Tournament history, calls for Rioux started raining down from the upper deck with nearly 10 minutes still remaining. He maintained a straight face at first, but couldn’t help grinning as the roars grew louder by the game’s final media timeout.
It wasn’t just fans doing the campaigning. Florida center Rueben Chinyelu, who broke the program’s single-season double-double record on Friday, led the “We Want Ollie!” chants from the bench, pleading with head coach Todd Golden to give the big man his moment. Redshirting teammate AJ Brown joined in, nudging Rioux and trying to get him excited as the building crescendoed around them.
Golden finally obliged with around 2:30 left on the clock, sending Rioux to the scorer’s table before he checked in with 1:54 to go. What happened next sent the arena into full pandemonium. Rioux snatched an offensive rebound and threw down a put-back dunk — barely needing to leave the ground to do so — for his first career NCAA Tournament points, making him the tallest player ever to score in a Tournament game. Fans chanted “Oli! Oli!” The bench went berserk. His 7-foot teammate Micah Handlogten was so overcome that he dropped to the floor and bounced up and down on his chest in celebration.
“It’s a great moment — I got the rebound and then I dunked it — but it’s also a great moment because I hustled, I did my job,” Rioux said afterward. “I came to play.”
The moment was perhaps the purest the NCAA Tournament has produced this March: a developmental player whose role is largely that of a practice body grinding behind the scenes, suddenly bathed in the March spotlight with thousands screaming his name.
“You guys don’t see behind the scenes,” Chinyelu said after the game. “They get ready, they’re getting us ready, they’re playing with us, trying to make sure we have what we need to deliver.”
Rioux himself seemed almost at a loss for words when asked about his cult following. “It has been amazing,” he said. “It’s one of a kind.”
The Gators, now 27-7 on the season, will face No. 9 Iowa on Sunday at 7:10 p.m. ET in the second round. For Florida faithful, the scoreline will matter — but not nearly as much as whether Mr. Golden gives big Oli one more moment to savor.
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