November 27, 2024
When Columbia’s Riley Weiss focused less on outcomes, she found her blueprint for success
Weiss: 'How you move on to the next thing is what will keep your confidence higher'
On the road against Villanova on Nov. 16, Columbia had turned up its defense in the fourth quarter and come back from a 13-point deficit. Junior forward Susie Rafiu made the game-tying layup with 12 seconds left, then the Lions gave up a free throw to put Villanova ahead. But the Lions still had one more play, and sophomore guard Riley Weiss — their best free-throw shooter — drew a foul with one second remaining.
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She stepped to the line, facing an avalanche of noise from the Villanova band behind the basket and the fans wanting free mini donuts if she missed both shots.
She missed them, and Columbia ran out of time in a 68-67 loss.
For Weiss, it was the ultimate test of something she and head coach Megan Griffith have been talking about as she develops into one of Columbia’s top players: Focus on the process, not the outcome.
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Last season, Weiss was a highly touted first-year for the Lions. She’d played six seasons of high school varsity basketball starting in seventh grade, and she averaged 40.8 points per game as a sophomore and 39.9 as a junior.
“She’s one of the most skilled players I’ve ever coached coming into college,” Griffith told The Next after the Villanova game.
Early in Weiss’ freshman season, Griffith declared that Weiss was one of the best shooters in the country, on par with then-senior guard Abbey Hsu, the Ivy League’s all-time leader in made 3-pointers. But like any first-year, Weiss was adjusting to the pace and the intensity of college basketball, and by her own estimation, she struggled to find consistency. She averaged 7.1 points in 15.8 minutes per game and made 33.6% of her 3-pointers, but she had almost as many games where she scored 2 or fewer points (nine) as games where she scored in double figures (10).
Over the summer, Weiss spent a lot of time honing her shot and getting stronger. The coaching staff challenged the players to make 25,000 shots each, and the players tracked their progress in a spreadsheet. Weiss and her teammates also worked with Columbia’s strength and conditioning staff on making their on-court movements more efficient. Those sessions helped Weiss get quicker defensively, improve her first step offensively, and consistently have her feet set so she’s ready to shoot every time she catches the ball.
“Ri has just put in so much work this offseason,” senior guard Cecelia Collins told reporters on Oct. 28, a week before the season started. “We say it all the time: She seems like a different person.”
“I feel a lot more confident heading into this year,” Weiss told The Next on Oct. 28. “I feel like I put in the work this summer, so always falling back on that.”
And instead of learning the Lions’ system from scratch, she had a year of experience to lean on. That helped her confidence, too.
“It feels a lot better, a lot different,” she said. “… I’ve learned all this stuff, and it’s like relearning it this year, but I already know.”
Weiss continued to put in the work in the fall and as the season began. Citing the tracking tools Columbia uses, Griffith said Weiss is usually one of the players who has the highest workload and runs the farthest distances in practice.
Weiss knows Columbia needs her to step up this season. Hsu, who is also Columbia’s all-time leading scorer across women’s and men’s basketball, graduated, and Weiss is a starter now. She doesn’t have to be Hsu, Griffith made clear in the preseason — but she has the ability to replace a lot of the scoring Hsu left behind.
A hint at Weiss’ role comes even before the ball is tipped, when she does her personalized handshake during lineup introductions with sophomore guard Fliss Henderson. They each fire off an imaginary bow and arrow, but they flash the 3-point sign with their hands as they do it, making 3-point arrows.
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Weiss is still figuring out her larger role and how to be consistent every night, but the early returns have been positive.
Through Columbia’s first eight games, Weiss is averaging 16.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 1.1 steals in 30.8 minutes per game. She leads the Lions in scoring and is shooting 35.4% from behind the arc on 8.1 attempts per game. That combination of efficiency and volume forces defenses to adjust, creating space for her to drive or for her teammates to be open.
“There’s nobody on the court that’s going to demand a closeout like [Weiss],” Griffith told reporters after a win over Southern Mississippi on Sunday.
“You like to play with those types of people,” Collins told The Next in the preseason. “Not only do they score so much, but they demand all of that attention. So it’s so nice. It opens up the floor. … We all kind of got a piece of that last year with Abbey … and now, especially with the growth of Riley’s game, she’s been able to kind of demand that similar amount of attention. So playing with her has been great so far.”
Weiss has also taken advantage of defenses trying to run her off the 3-point line by taking and making more 2-pointers. She’s attempting 7.0 2-pointers per game this season, up from 2.1 last season. She’s mixing in more midrange pull-ups and floaters, which are now comfortable shots for her, and she’s gotten better at finishing through contact at the rim.
| Shot attempts per game, 2023-24 | Share of all shots attempted, 2023-24 | Shot attempts per game, 2024-25 | Share of all shots attempted, 2024-25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| At the rim | 0.9 | 15% | 1.8 | 12% |
| Other 2-pointers | 1.2 | 19% | 5.3 | 35% |
| 3-pointers | 4.3 | 67% | 8.1 | 54% |
Weiss got off to a hot start this season, putting up 18 points against Stony Brook and a career-high 25 in an overtime win at Providence. Against Stony Brook, she also stuffed the stat sheet with three rebounds, three assists and two steals, and she made seven of 15 3-pointers across the two games.
“It’s just great to see it come together for somebody when they’re given an opportunity,” Griffith told reporters on Nov. 14.
But Weiss is now often drawing the opponent’s best defender — an honor previously reserved for Hsu. Facing that kind of pressure against FGCU in Columbia’s third game of the season, Weiss had just 2 points on 1-for-11 shooting and four turnovers.
“That’s something that’s new for her,” Griffith said about the defensive attention. “And she may have seen that in high school … but it’s very different at the college level when you’re playing against a senior.”
Weiss rebounded with 13 points in the first half against Villanova, including a driving layup, a four-point play and a 3-pointer from several steps behind the arc. But she went scoreless in the second half, including missing the crucial free throws.
“Do I think Riley makes those free throws 95% of the time? I do,” Griffith said postgame. “But this was a new experience for her. … I [told her], ‘You gotta realize that when we need you to make those, you’re gonna make them now because you’ve had this experience.’”
Missing the free throws stung, Weiss told The Next on Friday, but she parked herself in the gym to practice them. (Many of her teammates did, too, as the Lions shot just 8-for-19 from the line against Villanova.)
“[I’m] trying to use that as motivation,” Weiss said, “because if not, it’s just gonna go to waste.”
Weiss showed her resilience again after the Villanova loss by putting up at least 16 points in each of her next four games, including games on three straight days in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament this week.
Throughout the season, Weiss is trying to be the same player every day, even if the results fluctuate. That’s something she’s seen from Hsu and from her current captains in Collins, senior guard Kitty Henderson and junior guard/forward Perri Page. Weiss is doing that by focusing on the small details that are in her control, rather than the outcomes that aren’t always controllable.
Those details sometimes passed her by last season as she was trying to learn so much so quickly and make an impact. But now she’s ready to process them.
“I keep telling her it’s not about making every shot,” Griffith said on Nov. 14. “It’s about how you do it. Are you approaching the ball the same way? Are you getting to your spots? Are your feet set? So just that level of attention to detail she did not have last year, and she has it now. So that’s what we keep trying to lean into and celebrate and talk about and coach her up on.”
“Last year, the reason maybe that at points my confidence was a little lower is just because I was very focused on the outcomes of things,” Weiss said in October. “Like, my shot wouldn’t go in; oh, there goes my confidence. But … how you respond to them and how you move on to the next thing is what will keep your confidence higher.”
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Griffith has seen Weiss shake off tough practices and games better this season, and Weiss’ teammates have also noticed her new mentality. She has helped the captains lead a young team, Collins said in the preseason, and her confidence also means her teammates can push her harder than they could last season.
“We have been able to actually call her up and kind of challenge her a lot more than last year, and that’s something that’s really important in our program,” Kitty Henderson told reporters on Friday. “… Now we can really be at the same level with her, rather than her being a freshman and kind of being a little worried about everything.
“But I think she’s taken a big step, and she just has to keep being her.”
Being herself is Griffith’s message for Weiss, too. She has enjoyed seeing Weiss develop into a better, more confident version of herself since arriving on campus as a first-year. But Griffith is also relishing the fact that this is only the beginning for the sophomore.
“She’s put herself in the best position, and now there’s a matter of adjusting and doing and knowing when to do things,” Griffith said after the Villanova game. “… She’s just learning the game still. … And I don’t think we’ve seen the best of Riley. I can definitely say that.”
Written by Jenn Hatfield
Jenn Hatfield has been a contributor to The Next since December 2018 and is currently the site's managing editor, Washington Mystics beat reporter and Ivy League beat reporter. Her work has also appeared at FiveThirtyEight, Her Hoop Stats, FanSided, Power Plays and Princeton Alumni Weekly.
