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Walker works on wins
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Trinity's Brian Morris has been selected to the boys' basketball all-state first team. (Sentinel file photos)
Remember the moment you realized you weren't in high school anymore?
It could have been when the Ancient Sumerian Cultures professor slapped down a 17-page exam on your desk during the second week of classes and informed you there was a hour to get it done. No exceptions.
It could have been the instant your parents stepped out of your dorm room and began the long trek home, leaving you independent and strangely undecided about what to do next.
For Mike Walker, it was when he went to his first practice with the Penn State men's basketball team and spent 2 1/2 hours learning the intricacies of defense.
"Then," Walker says, pausing slightly, "I knew it was a different level."
Want to hear something depressing?
Walker has lost more basketball games in the past four months than he did in four years with the Trinity Shamrocks.
On 23 separate occasions, Walker and the Penn State men's basketball team sat on the wrong side of the score. Twenty-three times, Walker trudged back to the locker room with his head down, thinking, "It seemed a lot easier in high school."
Twenty-three times, he's vowed to get better.
"It's been hard, that's been the biggest adjustment for me," Walker says. "Going from a place where you win all the time to losing three of the first four games. Going from last year where I'm playing with a team that has five kids that are six foot tall, to playing (against Illinois) where they have three or four NBA guys. Losing anytime, that always hurts. You have to pick out the good things and it's not like I lost that winning mentality."
It's a winning mentality cultivated from tasting defeat just seven times in 130 games of high school ball at Trinity between 2001 and 2004, with two state titles thrown in along the way for good measure.
At Penn State, Walker has been exposed to the other side of the coin, getting a dose of the punishment he dished out for so long on the high school hardwood.
After starting the 2004-05 season 5-2, the Lions won just two of their next 23 games, finishing with a 7-23 record and just one Big Ten Conference win, good for last place.
Worse, the Lions were barely competitive, with only nine of the losses by less than 10 points. They were almost considered a free win on opposing teams' schedules.
Suddenly, the kid who never lost experienced nothing but.
"Freshmen tend to equate their senior year of high school to their freshman year of college. There's no comparison," says Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis. "This is not high school any more. You don't play against three or four guys that you'll see in the NBA. I try to get them to think about their freshman year of high school, and how much better they've got (since then)."
"It's been a struggle for him up there," says Trinity head coach Larry Kostelac Jr., who coached Walker for four years. "They're playing hard and there are times he's playing great and there are other times when they're struggling. They're young and they're undersized. They're outmanned. The longer the season goes on it becomes very apparent. When people are fresh, it's not as easy to see."
The Penn State men's program has been in disarray for nearly four years. When former head coach Jerry Dunn resigned in 2003 after a 7-21 season, the Lions hired DeChellis to turn around a program that has only three NCAA Tournament appearances in the past 35 years.
When he took over, DeChellis had a program racked with transfers and players quitting the team. He managed just nine wins in his first season.
The plus for the players? Plenty of playing time for the young guys.
Walker averaged 26.4 minutes and 6.3 points per game this year, starting 15 of 29 games. He had a 1.2 assist-to-turnover ratio, the second highest on the team behind Ben Luber's 1.4.
He shot only 33 percent from the field and needs to work on his selection, but has shown flashes of the court vision and passing ability that made him a star at Trinity.
"We've gotten a lot of time for a freshman class," Walker says. "I'm hoping we can build on this. The most important thing to do is to stay up."
That can be hard when the losses start to add up like interest in a savings account. In high school, the hard work paid off with state championships and undefeated seasons. In college, there is no guarantee that your hard work and diligence will be rewarded with bigger numbers in the win column.
"We will go through a whole week of preparing for a team and we get beat on the things that we know they're going to do," says Walker. "We know what they're going to do, and we just have to come out and stop it."
Eventually, a player can only take so much defeat before it's time for some heavy introspection.
For Walker, the breaking point came after a Feb. 12 home loss to Ohio State, one where the Lions got double-doubles from Geary Claxton and Travis Parker but still fell 66-56 to the visiting Buckeyes.
The loss dropped Penn State to 7-16 overall and 1-9 in the conference, and Walker started to realize there would be no quick fix to a rapidly disintegrating season.
So he sat down with his parents and opened up about the pressures of playing Division I basketball, the culture of losing, the team's struggles ... everything.
"(The OSU game) was the type we had to have," Walker says. "I didn't play up to my capability. I just kind of hit the wall. We had two great days of practice. That was the game I just went out to eat with my parents and talked to them and let stuff sink in. There's always a bright side to every situation."
"It takes a toll on them," Kostelac says. "Night in and night out, that's physically and mentally tiring. That's what Mike and his teammates are facing right now. I know coach DeChellis and he's a very good coach and they're going to continue to work. I talked with Mike a week ago, and he's still upbeat and he wants to play again."
Although the Lions dropped their next eight games to close out the season, including another loss to Ohio State in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament where PSU led by 15 in the second half, Walker continues to stay committed.
There is no talk of transferring, from Walker or anyone else. The team seems to have come to a collective understanding that it has to get worse before it gets better, and that the losses now will pay dividends sooner rather than later.
Claxton has the makings of an All-Big Ten caliber player, and DeChellis has a recruiting class coming in this year that gives the Lions some much-needed size to compete in the Big Ten.
"Their future is bright, absolutely," says Ohio State coach Thad Matta. "They have freshmen that can run the offense, and they exploit mismatches. Claxton is a tremendous player. They are headed in the right direction."
"We laid a foundation for next year," Walker says. "I know my class. We're going to stay. No one has said anything about transferring. If anyone leaves we're back at ground zero."
