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Sports
Riley to go from Panthers to Wildcats : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisRiley to go from Panthers to Wildcats
| OHS senior commits to play football at Northwestern
| by Matt Daniels
| 8/14/2008
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A 31 on his ACT.
A 4.65 cumulative grade point average heading into his senior year.
Fourth in his class at Oswego High School.
All those numbers Tim Riley has accumulated in his first three years at OHS in the classroom are impressive enough to possibly garner a scholarship to Northwestern.
Throw in 951 rushing yards, 465 receiving yards, 27 tackles, 27 receptions and 15 rushing touchdowns from his junior year on the football field and it starts to make sense why Riley verbally committed earlier this week to play his college football for the Wildcats and head coach Pat Fitzgerald. Recruits can officially sign their letter of intents on National Signing Day, which usually happens in early February.
"I had visited probably three or four times and I liked it more each time I went up there," Riley said. "I really liked the coaching staff. Coach Fitzgerald , I feel is a really great guy and coach. Just their campus is beautiful. They have really nice facilities. It was a place I could definitely see myself spending the next four or five years."
Riley plans to major in economics at the private school in Evanston, and said Northwestern is planning on using him at an outside linebacker position once he arrives on campus.
While Riley dazzled many last fall with his offensive statistics, Oswego head coach Dave Keely said he puts himself in good position on defense in order to make a play on the ball.
Keely also said going into his senior year, Riley knows the areas he needs to improve his game before he takes it to opposing Big Ten stadiums.
"He wants to become a complete ball player and defensively, one thing that he knows that he wants to work on is really attacking the football and flying downhill towards it," Keely said. "And he'll do it. He's taken strides. Since last year, I'd say he's put on about 25 pounds of muscle mass."
Riley also looked into several Ivy League schools, including Princeton and Harvard. He also said he attended several camps at Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Purdue where coaches expressed interest in him. But he made up his mind for the Wildcats and said it's a relief to not have to worry about college choice headed into his senior year.
"I feel like if I improve on my stats from last year and on my play, it's just really going to help our team and that's the main goal is to have a successful goal this year," said Riley, who helped the Panthers to an 8-3 record last year and a Class 6A second-round playoff appearance.
Harvard had an offer ready for Riley, Keely said, but once the Wildcats offered a full scholarship last week, Riley decided to accept.
"It's all complementary of all the hard work Tim has put in to get to the level he's at right now," Keely said. "We're really fortunate. We don't have that happen to us very often in Oswego to play Division I football, especially at a Big Ten school."
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