The night before his second game as Eastern Washington’s head coach, David Riley had some free time, so he flipped on ESPN+ to watch his old boss, Shantay Legans, in his second game as Portland’s lead man.
It was a mostly non-competitive game. Portland dropped 122 points, including 65 in the second half, to cruise to a win over Division III Willamette. But the biggest winner that night was a lanky, 6-foot-6 freshman for the Bearcats, who in just his third career game, already put together his second 20-plus point performance.
“This kid was just killing,” Riley told Mid-Major Madness. “He was just posting up Moses Wood, and he hit a couple 3s. You see a DIII kid doing that against a good DI player, and you think ‘This kid has got a chance.’”
It turns out, he had more than just “a chance.” That kid was Cedric Coward, an relatively unknown 18-year-old from Fresno, California. Riley never forgot his name, and brought him to Eastern Washington out of the transfer portal the next spring, where he developed into one of the best players in the Big Sky. Now, after Coward followed Riley to Washington State for the 2024-25 season, he’s on the verge of being a first-round pick in June’s NBA Draft.
Coward scored 24 points, grabbed seven rebounds, and dished out five assists against the Pilots, which would end up being just another game in a terrific freshman campaign. He averaged 19.5 points, 12.0 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game in 2021-22, a bright spot as Willamette went 6-18 and 3-13 in the Northwest Conference.
Riley continued to keep tabs on Coward’s box scores for the rest of his freshman season, but didn’t find a ton of time to watch the film until he entered the transfer portal. Shortly after Coward put his name in the portal, Eagles’ assistant coach Arturo Ormond – a notable name in the Fresno basketball scene himself – was in communication with him, working quickly to bring him on a visit to EWU.
Despite his gaudy numbers and desirable length, there wasn’t a ton of competition in Coward’s recruitment. It shocked Riley, but he knows why.
“People didn’t think DIII guys and DII guys were good, so they didn’t want to recruit them,” Riley said. “Maybe it’s an ego thing, because I played in (the Northwest Conference), and I’m like ‘Well, I could’ve played DI.’”
It’s an approach that Riley – a former star guard at Whitworth University – says comes from the necessity to recruit outside the box.
“Go where the other people aren’t,” he said. “Eight years ago, you could’ve gotten a kid that was better than your league by getting a transfer, because nobody wanted transfers because they had to sit out for a year. Well then now that the portal is there, everyone wants transfers, and no one respected DII and DIII. We did really good with the DII and DIII guys, well, now everyone thinks they’re good, so they’re kind of overrecruited in my mind, and it’s honestly it’s the high school guys that are probably the underrecruited people now.”
Coward visited and committed to Eastern Washington, buying into Riley and the coaching staff’s plan to elevate his game to the next level. But even before he suited up in a game for the Eagles, he was catching eyes.
Cedric Coward (left) and LeJuan Watts (right) with head coach David Riley (middle) on their visit to Eastern Washington in 2022. Watts would end up committing to EWU, following Riley to Washington State, and is now slotted in as a projected starter for Texas Tech next season.
Courtesy of David Riley
A group of NBA scouts made the trip to Cheney to watch All-Big Sky Second Teamer Steele Venters at an Eastern practice in the lead up to the 2022-23 season, and while Riley was talking with Portland Trail Blazers assistant GM Mike Schmitz, Coward – at the time nursing a calf injury – walked by.
“He walked over by us, picked up two basketballs with his hands, and just kinda walked away,” Riley said.
Schmitz kept his eyes on Coward as he walked toward the foul line and started shooting free throws, and asked Riley a question.
“Who is that guy?,” Riley recalls Schmitz saying. “That guy’s measurables are crazy, is he any good?”
And Riley couldn’t give a clear answer, as he still hadn’t practiced much, let alone played in a game, but it planted the seed in his brain that the ceiling was higher than he may have thought.
In his first season with Eastern Washington, he averaged 7.3 points and 5.6 rebounds, coming off the bench as he got up to speed at the Division I level. Then, he took the next step.
As a junior, Coward became the leading scorer and one of the top candidates for Big Sky Player of the Year, putting up 15.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game with a solid mark from distance.
Over those two years, he learned how much work he’d need to put in, and then put in that work.
“He just didn’t know what he didn’t know when he first got here,” Riley said. “Once you put him in an environment, he’s such a high character kid and overachiever that he’s gonna do a little bt more than everyone else, and that’s kind of the way it progressed.”
After going through the NBA Draft process last spring, Coward turned down the draft to follow his coach to Washington State. Six games into the season, he suffered a season-ending injury to his shoulder.
He entered the draft and transfer portal once again, committing to Duke before the NBA Draft Combine, where he measured in with a 7-foot-2 inch wingspan, and impressed in the drills and scrimmages.
Coward is soaring up draft boards, expected to be a mid-first round pick next month, all but eliminating the possibility that he suits up for the Blue Devils.
“I’ve been in the gym with him every day for three years, we know he’s an NBA player, I don’t think that part is surprising,” Riley said. “But like, he played six games this year, and he’s about to go top 20. It’s insane. I’m just happy people are starting to see how good he can be and how special he is.”