Minium: Milton-Jones' Guidance Has Helped Riley Stack Become One of ODU's Most Improved Players
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Riley Stack loved her teammates, her coaches and the campus at Coastal Carolina University. She played high school basketball in Piedmont, South Carolina, just four hours away from Conway, and felt at home in the Palmetto State.
But after two seasons, the 6-foot-4 forward hadn’t made much progress on the basketball court. She wasn’t playing a lot, and worse, she said, “I wasn’t getting much better. I wasn’t improving.”
She knew she had potential, something that was apparent in high school, when she turned down offers from Ole Miss and Oklahoma State to stay in-state.
So, after her sophomore season, she reluctantly threw her name into the transfer portal, and when Old Dominion Head Coach DeLisha Milton-Jones called, it didn’t take her long to make ODU her next home.
Stack has come a long way this season. She has started 22 of 25 games for the Monarchs and has evolved into a defensive stalwart who is sixth nationally with 2.6 blocked shots per game.
She averages eight points and 5.2 rebounds per game, and most of her points and caroms have come in the second half of the season, in which, at times, she’s been a dominant player for ODU.
The Monarchs host Stack's old team, Coastal Carolina, Wednesday night at 5 in the first game of a doubleheader with the men’s basketball team, which meets Marshall in the second game.
Then, on Saturday the Monarchs host James Madison at 1 p.m. in the annual TowneBank Royal Rivalry game. The men meet Georgia State in the second game.
ODU (15-10 overall, 6-6 Sun Belt Conference) has won three out of its last four games, including two in a row on the road, a place where the Monarchs have struggled. They are tied for sixth in the Sun Belt standings and Milton-Jones says she wants to finish at least fourth to garner good seeding in the Sun Belt Tournament.
Stack has been a part of ODU’s good late-season run. She got off to a slow start but had a career game two weeks ago, scoring a career high 22 points, blocking seven shots, pulling down nine rebounds and picking off three steals in a runaway victory over ULM.
And what doesn’t show up in the box scores are all of the shots she alters, or are never taken, because of her intimidating presence in the paint.
“There’s a fear for guards when they go into the paint and know they have to shoot over Riley,” guard Kelsey Thompson said. “It makes you second-guess or change your shot.
“It really keeps teams out of the paint.”
Stack grew up playing in the back yard against her brothers and her father, Ryan Stack, who is 6-11, and who coached her as a kid; thus, at an early age she got used to getting some bumps and bruises, both physically as well as to her ego.
Ryan Stack was a second-round pick in the 1998 NBA draft and played for two seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers before going to Europe, where he played a decade.
“He killed me,” she said. “He said he took it easy on me but he didn’t.”
Stack was looking for that tough love when she entered the transfer portal and found it in Milton-Jones. Soon after arriving at ODU, she asked Milton-Jones to tutor her some, one-on-one, in the paint.
Stack knew what she was getting into. Milton-Jones was such a physical player in the WNBA that she earned the nickname “D-Nasty.”
“This young lady, she came to me one day and she said, ‘Coach D, I want to be better. I want you to do whatever you’ve got to do to help me,'" Milton-Jones said.
“And I said, ‘OK, but that means you’re going to have bruises all up and down your arms. There will be some tough days.’
“That’s what she was looking for. There have been days when she’s had to get up off the floor a few times.
“She works. She eats up every word that we say and you can see it become fruitful in how she’s playing. I love the comfort that she’s playing with now. She seems at home in the paint, which is something she wasn’t accustomed to before.
“Eventually, that’s going to lead to her stretching things out even more.”
Stack said she is “so grateful” for the time Milton-Jones has spent working with her.
“She is so intense,” Stack said. “She can be hard on all of us.
“But it’s because she’s so passionate for the game. I appreciate her passion. She wants the best for us, so she challenges us.”
Wednesday’s game will be Stack’s first against her former team, and in that, she isn’t alone. ODU's Dalanna Carter and Jaylen Ponder, who play a lot of minutes off the bench for ODU, also transferred from Coastal Carolina.
“I couldn’t believe that all three of them were available,” Milton-Jones said. “These kids are all talented.”
Milton-Jones has counseled all three about the emotions they will be feeling against Coastal on Wednesday and again on Saturday, Feb. 21, when the Monarchs and Chanticleers meet in Conway.
“I can remember when I was with the Los Angeles Sparks and I requested a trade,” she said. “I ended up with the Washington Mystics.
“The first time we played against the Sparks, I was crazy full of emotion. You want to play well, and so you might do a little too much.
“You have to find that moment when you settle down and everything kind of falls in place for you.”
Stack said things have clearly fallen into place for her. She has become something of a fan favorite, especially with young girls who clamor to shake her hand or get an autograph after games.
“The first time I visited ODU, it felt like home,” she said. “The fans her have been fantastic.
“I started off the season a little passive and I didn’t feel like I was playing very well.
“But it feels so good to be playing right now. I feel like I’m getting more confident in every game, I am getting better each week.”
Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
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