Final Four: At 7-foot-9, Florida's Olivier Rioux literally stands head and shoulders above the rest

SAN ANTONIO — When he walked around campus with Olivier Rioux for the first time, Florida forward Thomas Haugh discovered he was hanging out with a tourist attraction.

Total strangers approached the 7-foot-9, 305-pound Rioux to ask the redshirt freshman how tall he was or to see if he’d pose for a photo.

“He gets asked for a picture like every five seconds,” Haugh said. “It says a lot about him that he doesn’t get annoyed by it. He does a great job dealing with it.”

Rioux is college basketball’s ultimate novelty act, a giant who has grown three-plus inches since he was dubbed the world’s tallest teenager by the Guinness Book of World Records three years ago. He is redshirting this season to improve his conditioning and his stamina, yet the preferred walk-on draws more attention than many of his scholarship teammates.

After Florida rallied to defeat Texas Tech in the West Regional final, a video clip of Rioux went viral because he didn’t need to climb on a ladder to cut down a piece of net. He towered over even his tallest teammates during Florida’s open practice on Friday at the Alamodome, leaving onlookers slack-jawed and gawking.

The attention is nothing new for someone who is not the only skyscraper in his family. Rioux’s father, a photographer, is 6-foot-8. Rioux’s mother, a former volleyball player, is 6-1. His older brother, a former basketball player, is 6-9. They used to draw a lot of attention in the Montreal suburbs when they went to the mall or out to dinner.

“Everybody would come up to my dad and say, ‘Oh my God, how tall are you? Oh, even your child is tall?’” Rioux said.

Rioux said his father was always “respectful,” a trait that he has tried to emulate.

Before long, it was Rioux who became the biggest curiosity. He stood 5-2 in kindergarten, 6-1 by the time he was 8 years old. At age 12, Rioux would have made the NBA versions of LeBron James or Jayson Tatum look undersized.

While Rioux has always clogged the paint and shielded the rim with his immense size, his modest skill and lack of foot speed has limited his impact. He came off the bench for Canada at the U-17 World Cup, averaging 2.7 ...