Cody Riley Leaves UCLA Men's Basketball Season Opener With Knee Injury

The Bruins are down their top post player.

Forward Cody Riley suffered a left knee injury midway through the first half of No. 2 UCLA men's basketball's season opener against Cal State Bakersfield on Tuesday night. UCLA Athletics confirmed Riley would not return to the contest.

Less than eight minutes into the 2021-2022 season, Riley went for a loose ball and had a Roadrunners player dive to the floor and hit his left knee straight on. Riley yelled out in pain and immediately grabbed his leg, and the referees stopped play despite not calling a foul on the sequence.

Trainers came to help Riley as he lay on the court, stretching out his leg as he had his hands behind his head on the floor.

After walking off mostly under his own power, Riley spent the next few minutes behind the bench getting additional medical attention out of view of the press box. There were several team personnel surrounding Riley, and they eventually guided him back down the tunnel and into the locker room.

It was at that point Riley was ruled out for the remainder of the game, but there has not been an officially announced diagnosis for the injury.

Riley started 31 of UCLA's 32 games last season, including all six in the NCAA tournament. The 6-foot-9 big man averaged 10.0 points and 5.4 rebounds in 23.3 minutes per game last year. The redshirt senior is the Bruins' most experienced player, having been on the roster since the start of the 2017-2018 season.

UCLA lost forward/center Jalen Hill to an early retirement in the offseason due to mental health reasons, but they brought in Rutgers transfer center Myles Johnson to take his spot on the roster. Redshirt junior Kenneth Nwuba is on scholarship as well.

Riley's injury comes just one day after coach Mick Cronin told reporters redshirt freshman forward Mac Etienne suffered a potential season-ending knee injury of his own. The diagnosis is still up-in-the air, but Cronin said the school's medical staff is "90-something percent" sure of what it is, and he seemed to allude toward it being a torn ACL.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.