UAB’s Busy Summer Wraps Up With Addition of UMASS Transfer Daniel Rivera
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - August 3, 2025
It’s been a busy summer for UAB basketball coach Andy Kennedy and a roster that includes no returning scholarship players from last season’s team. It also has been an enjoyable summer for Kennedy.
“This has been one of my most enjoyable summers as it relates to the way that these guys have approached day-to-day work,” Kennedy said. “Very little drama. Guys come in and work, they're attentive.”
He said nothing about it being easy and not just because he’s trying to mesh an entire roster together in a few months. For most of the summer, the Blazers were shorthanded with Joao Das Chagas joining late after going home to visit family in Brazil and Ahmad Robinson sidelined from contact work while rehabbing a shoulder that required surgery following last season. Kennedy and his staff simply changed the plan.
“We've probably done less schematically simply because we've had some more roster fluctuation,” Kennedy said. “We've had (Das Chagas) only arrive a couple of weeks ago and he's not a hundred percent yet because he's still nursing a little bit of a knee situation. We haven't had Ahmad go live at all. So, I didn't want to get too deep into schematics without two or three of our integral pieces being involved. So, we've just been bare bones, basic, learning how to compete, fundamentals, foundation, all of those things. I've been really pleased with the way that I can see visible improvement in our attempt to build championship level habits.”
The Blazers have three more days of practice remaining with the summer session closing on Wednesday. The players then take about three weeks off before returning to the limited practice session once school begins in late August. They will also move forward with a change to the roster puzzle. Daniel Rivera, a transfer from UMass was added early this week and Miami transfer Paul Djobet is no longer listed on the UAB roster.
Rivera, a 6-foot-7, 215-pound forward, who played at UMass for one season, signed with UAB earlier this week. Rivera averaged 11.5 points, 7.3 rebounds and two assists in his only season at UMass. He averaged 13.3 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.2 assists while playing at Bryant in 2023-24. Rivera redshirted at St. Louis in 2022-23 and was a junior college All-American at Odessa College in Texas the previous year.
Kennedy said Rivera fits a need.
“We need another guy in our front court that can play like a grownup, who can play with force and has physicality,” Kennedy said. “He brings us what I thought we were lacking. He’s strong. He can really dribble. He’s not a great shooter but he's more of a facilitator, rebounder, blocks shots (and) plays with grown man's strength.”
Rivera was at practice on Thursday but did not participate. Kennedy said it shouldn’t take long for him to catch up.
“As I told him when we were in the recruiting process, he's really not that far behind because we don't have a lot of stuff in schematically,” Kennedy said. “He's played Division I for the last two year. He played it at Bryant, then he played for my good friend Frank Martin (at UMass). I know he knows how to practice, I know he knows how to operate right. Frank and I have a lot of the same terminologies and a lot of the same core principles. Frank was a huge advocate for the kid so I don't think he's gonna have a hard time at all transitioning into getting comfortable in what we're doing. That won't happen until we get back (for the start of fall semester). But we still have time. There's plenty of time to get him on the same page as his teammates.”