Kennedy Looks For Leadership And Toughness From ‘Anchor’ Daniel Rivera

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - October 21, 2025

Daniel Rivera’s self-scouting report includes his ability to score the basketball in a variety of ways and the willingness to play at a high level on the defensive end. Stuck in the middle of his assessment, though, just might be the most important thing the well-traveled Rivera brings to his new home at UAB.

“You know, I'm pretty aggressive and just I pride myself in being the hardest playing dude out there no matter who's on the court,” Rivera said. “Playing hard and giving that effort is always a part of winning, you know, so that’s my focus.”

That’s a habit fostered through his many stops in college basketball, beginning with a year at Odessa College in Texas. He continued his winding college basketball path through Saint Louis, Bryant and UMASS before arriving in Birmingham in August. However, Rivera said, the habit of being aggressive and hard-nosed began long before he stepped on a college basketball court.

Truthfully, it began early in life.

“Puerto Rico and New York are pretty tough environments, you know,” Rivera said after Monday afternoon’s practice inside Bartow Arena. “Coming from a poor family, you got to have that toughness in you. You got to be loud, you got to communicate. You know, express yourself and show that you could do stuff.”

Rivera was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lived there until he was 12.

“It was tough, you know, but my parents they raised me right,” Rivera said. “I'm thankful for them. They made sure, like, there were a lot of situations I could have gotten into. But basketball is what got me here, basically. Like, it helped me throughout my whole life. I stuck with that because I saw the sacrifice of my mom and dad.”

Rivera moved to New York City with his mother and siblings after his parents split. They originally lived in Brooklyn but soon found out that the Bronx was a better fit because of a language barrier.

“I spoke only Spanish,” Rivera said. “I didn't know English. Not a word. Not a curse word. Nothing. They put me into school. When we first got here we went to Brooklyn so there's not that many Spanish people where they can translate and stuff like that. Then we kind of found out in the Bronx there's more Spanish speaking people and more schools that have translators. We moved to the Bronx, so we could learn the language.”

His lessons came in school. They also came from listening to music and listening to conversations. He said it took him about a year and a half to become comfortable speaking English and another year after that to be fluent. In some ways, he says, he’s still learning today. The basketball court was also a classroom for him.

“It really helped because it forced me to speak like pass the ball or call screens, stuff like that,” Rivera said. “As a basketball player you got to communicate, that's a big part of the game. It forced me to talk the language.”

Rivera played at a pair of high schools – James Monroe High and Our Saviour Lutheran High – before moving to Odessa, Texas. Now, on the surface moving to West Texas from New York City comes complete with a ton of culture shock. For Rivera, however, it came with a shrug.

“I think it was a harder process coming from Puerto Rico to the Bronx,” Rivera said.

It also helped that his older brother, Mike, was a 6-foot-8, 225-pound forward on the Odessa College basketball team. It was his brother Mike who guided him through that season and kept him on track. Another older teammate, Dannis Jenkins, who later played for St. John’s and is now on a NBA roster with the Detroit Pistons, also helped guide him through. Rivera had a solid season, averaging 9.2 points, hitting 60 percent from the field, and 4.4 rebounds for a team that finished 28-6.

Rivera moved on to Saint Louis but sat out the 2022-23 season with an injury. He played at Bryant in 2023-24, averaging 13.3 points and 8.1 rebounds in 33 games, with 32 starts, while finishing tied for 17th in the country with 73 blocked shots. Bryant finished 20-13 and third in the America East Conference. Last season at UMass, had averaged 11.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in 29 games as a starter.

After the season at UMass, Rivera entered the portal yet again. This time, though, it took him a while to find a landing spot, partly because he had a knee scope in the spring. UAB head coach Andy Kennedy found himself needing to fill a spot in late summer and had previously recruited Rivera. It wasn’t until August that Rivera signed and came to the UAB campus. By that time, a UAB team that returned no scholarship players from last season were a little more than two months into their bonding process. It wasn’t easy for Rivera, who also was still working his way back to full strength.

“For anybody, coming late into the team, just trying to find a way to get comfortable in the comfortable situations, is not easy,” Rivera said. “You just try to find that every day. But our team is a team where everybody helps you with the process. I got help from my teammates to fit in, so that's something that builds our chemistry together. Everybody was on the same page. They were like, ‘He's new, he's gonna help us win.’ And they just tried to make me feel comfortable.”

Rivera not only is comfortable now but he’s also in position to play a key role on this team.

“He's finding his rhythm a little bit,” Kennedy said. “He's finding his identity on this team. He was the last add to this group. So literally, as a native Puerto Rican, we were literally speaking a different language with him for a long time. I think he's finally settling in and understanding what his place is with this team. And he's got a huge role. We need him to anchor us. He's a guy that's done it at the A-10 level, which I think equates very comparably to the American Conference. So he's a guy that's been in these type of games before. We need leadership and consistency out of him.”

On Thursday, Kennedy will get to see how far Rivera and the rest of his team has come in a 6;30 p.m. exhibition game at Bartow Arena against a Vanderbilt team that played in the NCAA Tournament last season.

“We're definitely looking forward to that,” Rivera said. “I think this game is a test for us as a team to see what's like going forward. It's going to be hard, I think this is a NCAA Tournament team we’re playing, but this game is going to prepare us for the whole season. I think it's pretty exciting. It's a new team, I think we will be ready for it.”