Weiss Shines for Columbia Women’s Hoops

The Columbia University women’s basketball team has been asking a lot from Riley Weiss this winter.

Coming off their first-ever March Madness showing last year, the Lions have not only looked to the sophomore guard from Hewlett, N.Y., to provide the lion’s share of the scoring but also to be a de facto team leader, a role typically unbefitting of a second-year player. But Weiss, in her meteoric rise to emerging as one of the deadliest perimeter shooters in women’s college basketball, has exceeded in both areas for an underclass-heavy Columbia team that has nevertheless been perched on the top of the Ivy League standings and is positioned well for returning to the NCAA tournament next month.

“I think just being able to have more of a voice this year just because I’m learning things for the second time now,” Weiss shared about how her role and game have evolved when speaking to the AJT last week. “Freshman year, there’s a lot being thrown at you so just to have more knowledge of the game and have more knowledge of what we want to do. The physicality in college basketball is much different than high school so I think this summer I focused on getting stronger.”

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Weiss had a solid freshman year, appearing in all 30 games and being tabbed Ivy League Rookie of the Week thrice. Her sophomore season, however, has been nothing short of spectacular as going into this past weekend’s big showdown against fellow Ivy League heavyweight Princeton, Weiss ranked No. 7 nationally in three-pointers made per game and was the second-leading scorer in the league. And in this rivalry game that for now decided sole possession of first place in the Ivy League, Weiss exploded for a career-high 34 points, 16 of which came in a fourth quarter that she took over, to fuel Columbia to a 64-60 road win. This scintillating performance followed other evenings in which Weiss has lit up the box score, most notably when she poured in 25 and 26 points against Penn and Harvard, respectively, in the last week of January.

Weiss’ stellar sophomore campaign follows a high school career that began when, as a seventh grader, she cracked the varsity roster at George W. Hewlett High after her middle school gym teacher recognized the immense talent and encouraged her to go out for the varsity. By her eighth-grade season, a year before entering high school, Weiss was named team captain — a mantle that closely parallels her current leadership post as a sophomore for Columbia. “It was a really good experience for me getting to be around older girls at such a young age and getting to play at the high school level,” reflected Weiss.

She would go onto net more than 2,000 points from seventh to 11th grade before leaving as the school’s all-time leading scorer to finish her secondary education at North Broward Prep in South Florida. Just as she feels it was the right decision to continue her basketball-exclusive high school career for a prep school that she piloted to a district championship on the heels of her winning gold at the 2022 Maccabiah Games with Team USA, so too is she content with playing college hoops in her home state of New York.

“It was nice to be in Florida for a year, but it’s also really nice to be home in New York,” Weiss noted.

Columbia is less than 25 miles from her hometown of Hewlett, but at times over the past year, it has been its own world with groups of pro-Palestinian students establishing encampments of tents on the university’s famous campus. Yet, the string of tumultuous outbursts has not deterred Weiss from enjoying her undergrad experience away from the gym.

“I’ve had a great time so far at Columbia,” she continued. “There are just so many things to do in New York City. You never get bored. I met so many great people here.”

That Weiss plays within an hour’s drive of her parents means that her dad, Jeff, a very good college basketball player in his own right who went on to coach 32 years at Lawrence Woodmere Academy on Long Island while compiling 19 league championships, can regularly watch her games in person. But it also means having scarce opportunities to watch her twin brother, Ryan, a first-year guard for Brandeis University with whom she is very close, take the court. Indeed, virtually every memory of Riley’s basketball-centric childhood involves an image of shooting mid-range jump shots with Ryan during halftime of her father’s games or practicing off-hand dribbling during a family vacation. From what she’s told, Riley was indoctrinated into the family business when she was a toddler. “I just literally remember growing up in the gym. I was there every day after school,” explained Riley, whose house was a five-minute drive from Lawrence Woodmere Academy.

Growing up on Long Island, Weiss was constantly surrounded by classmates, friends, and basketball teammates who equated springtime with lacrosse, a sport that is wildly popular in New York’s Nassau and Suffolk counties. Before high school, Weiss had played lacrosse and surely could have been an impact player for George W. Hewlett. But she ultimately stayed true to the one-sport specialization approach.

“I don’t know if I wish I played other sports in high school,” she offered. “In high school I just wanted to focus on basketball, but I don’t know if I regret not playing another sport.”

Naturally, this time of year, when she wasn’t playing high school basketball, Weiss was tuned into an endless stream of college basketball games on television, pining for the opportunity to one day actually partake in March Madness. After getting a taste of postseason college basketball last year, when Columbia fell to Vanderbilt in the First Four, Weiss hopes to be the floor general for an up-and-coming Columbia squad that will once again capture the Ivy League crown to secure a coveted at-large bid to the NCAAs.

“Growing up as a kid, all I watched was like the NCAA tournament. It was pretty surreal to be there and obviously we have a great opportunity to be there again this year, so it’s super exciting.”