March 16, 2015
By Jerome Boettcher |Subscribe to Commodore Nation
Tom LaChance walked onto the Marquette basketball team despite measuring in at just 5-foot-11-inches. His wife, Linda, is only 5-4.
On both sides of their family, “vertically challenged” runs rampant. So Tom looks at his oldest child and only son, Riley, in bewilderment.
“We have no tall relatives; I don’t know how he got to be 6-2,” Tom said. “It’s a blessing.”
Cracking 6-feet might be a big deal for the LaChance family but both Tom and Riley knew early on that Riley’s ticket to growing his basketball career wouldn’t be his height.
“That was one thing (his dad) always taught me from a young age that I’m not going to be 6-5, 6-6 and crazy athletic,” said Riley LaChance, the second-leading scorer for Vanderbilt. “So I’m going to have to shoot the ball and shoot the ball the right way. He is a real stickler on shooting the ball right away and with the right fundamentals.”
Riley, who was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team and is the team’s second leading scorer heading into a first-round NIT matchup against St. Mary’s on Wednesday, calls his father his biggest influence into basketball and it is easy to see why.
After two years of playing NAIA basketball ball, Tom transferred to Marquette and walked on under coach Kevin O’Neill. Immediately after his playing career ended he jumped into coaching and has been working on the AAU circuit for 25 years. Riley was introduced to basketball before he even knew what a basketball was.
“I took him to practice before he was even walking,” Tom said. “He has had a basketball in his hands for a long time.”
With his father as his AAU coach, Riley learned the game and played some of the best talent in tournaments around the country.
Though Tom introduced Riley to the sport, he didn’t have to twist his son’s arm to improve his work ethic. Tom had a key to the gym at the church where their AAU team, Ray Allen Select Milwaukee, practiced. Often Riley could be found at the gym after AAU and high school games, shooting at 10:30 at night.
During a tournament the summer before his junior year, the team had a day off for Fourth of July. Tom and Riley were supposed to attend a family picnic, but they showed up a little late. Riley felt something was off with his shot so he spent more than an hour on Fourth of July shooting jumpers as his father rebounded for him.
“That’s just how he is. If something doesn’t feel just right he is going to be out there shooting or working on his game until he feels right,” Tom said. “I never had to push him to get in the gym. He was always there before I was. I was really hard on him as a coach. I think a coach is always hardest on his kid. I could tell he had the drive to be a good player.”
It was harder to win over college coaches at the start during the recruiting process. Though he was a unanimous first-team All-State selection as a senior and left as his school’s all-time leading scorer with more than 1,600 points, Riley received a bevy of offers from smaller programs before a major program offered him. Schools in his backyard, Wisconsin and Marquette, didn’t recruit him much.
“That turned out to be a blessing because it just made him work harder,” Tom said. “It made him go to a school where he is a good fit at. He is a perfect fit for Coach (Kevin) Stallings and what they do down there and how they play.”
His first college season has been a fruitful one as he has averaged 12.5 points a game, behind only Damian Jones.What has impressed fans, teammates and coaches alike is his toughness. His stature and boyish looks might not make him an obvious threat but he has showed resiliency. He wears a form-fitted mask currently after breaking his nose against Yale.
“I think that is something I’ve always prided myself on is being aggressive, playing the way I know how and not trying to back down on anybody, not trying to be scared of anybody, playing aggressive and playing my game,” Riley said.
As much as he has been self-motivated and self-driven, Riley says he owes a lot to his father. His father’s guidance, honesty and love have helped mold him into the player he is now.
“He was always there to motivate me if I needed it, to push me,” Riley said. “But, at the same time, there is a parent, there is a dad. I think that is something that was really big for me – just really having someone always there. If you want to go shoot, if you want to just talk, whatever, he was always there to give me advice, help make me better and I can’t thank him enough for that.”
