2011 prospect Austin Rivers talks upcoming visits and more

2011 prospect Austin Rivers - BDN Photo

Austin Rivers, a nearly 6’5” guard from Winter Park, Florida, was a basketball prodigy who has been on the radar of scouts since he was in middle school. The fact that his father is Glenn “Doc” Rivers, a thirteen year NBA veteran and current head coach of the Boston Celtics, and his older brother Jeremiah was a high-major player at Georgetown and currently is at Indiana only heightened his notoriety. Austin committed to the then twice-defending National Champion University of Florida Gators in the July immediately following his freshman season at Winter Park High School.

This past summer, Rivers was teamed up briefly with Gatorade Player of the Year, Brandon Knight, on the AAU circuit for Each One Teach One (FL). He was also one of the top performers throughout the live period at the LeBron James Skills Academy, the Peach Jam, and the AAU Nationals, where he was closely observed by Duke‘s Mike Krzyzewski. Recently, the industrious and confident young man made headlines by telling the Sporting News that he was going to visit several schools. Before the Boost Mobile Elite 24 game in New York, Austin Rivers sat down with Blue Devil Nation to discuss a wide variety of topics, including what he is looking for on his upcoming visits, his business-like approach to basketball, why he initially chose Florida, his experience with Brandon Knight, and why he’d like the current coach of the Celtics to be known as Austin Rivers’ dad.

There was that recent piece in the Sporting News. The noteworthy part was that it mentioned that you were going to visit other schools out of respect for your father. Can you expound on your decision and did your mother recommend that as well?

Not really. It was mostly me and my father. You know after seeing what happened to my brother…You know he went to college and had a tough time, you know, getting comfortable. You know seeing that he made the wrong choice by going to Georgetown.

I was going to ask you about Jeremiah in a moment.

Yeah, you know, just out of respect for my dad, I wanted to go look at, you know, a couple of other programs. You know just in case something happens. You never know with Coach Donovan. With the caliber of coach he is, he may get an offer. You never know. I just wanted to go out of respect..

Well, you also committed at a relatively young age.

Yeah, exactly, I committed at a really young age just because…

Were you feeling a lot of pressure at the time?

Yeah, well, at the age…I mean, when I got offered, you know Florida was just coming off of two national championships.

Right, right, there was probably also some hometown pressure.

Yeah, exactly, the hometown school so, you know, everybody was like “Whoa, Florida.” So, at the time, you know, I was like why wouldn’t I go there? They have everything right. So, you know, that was why I chose to go there and, you know, I still love it. I’m still as committed as I was when I first committed. It’s just that I want to look at other schools, in case anything ever happened.

Sure, have you finalized a list of schools that you intend on visiting yet?

Yeah, I’m going to try to go up to look at Duke [This preview is a small sample of  in depth interview]