From 2019-2021, the Miami men’s basketball team went 25-33 overall and 11-28 in the ACC. From 2021-2023, the Hurricanes have gone 53-18 overall and 29-11 in the ACC with two trips to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
One player who has been through it all is fourth-year forward Anthony Walker, who won two state championships at Perry Hall prior to his time at Miami. The 6-foot-9, 215-pound forward is averaging 5.0 points and 2.5 rebounds in 122 career games entering the Hurricanes’ Sweet 16 matchup against Houston on March 24.
Walker has started 19 games throughout his four-year career — and just three the past two seasons. What made the Baltimore native stick around when many others would have jumped ship in search of more playing time elsewhere?
“You’ve just got to realize that some things are bigger than yourself. The sum is bigger than the parts, so what we’re trying to accomplish here is more important than my playing time,” Walker said on Glenn Clark Radio March 22. “It’s more important than my points per game. It’s more important than my stats. We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done here before. Last year, we made a historic run. We went the furthest than we ever went in school history. This time we’re trying to do it again, but even bigger.”
Last year, Miami made it all the way to the Elite Eight before falling to eventual champion Kansas, 76-50, in Chicago. This time around, the fifth-seeded Hurricanes are preparing to face a championship contender in Houston, which enters the Sweet 16 at 33-3 overall and as KenPom’s top team in the country.
Miami would love an offensive performance like the one it got against Indiana in the second round, when the Hurricanes scored 85 points on 48.6 percent shooting from the field and 39.1 percent shooting from 3-point range. Veteran guards Jordan Miller, Nijel Pack and Isaiah Wong combined for 58 points in the win.
So how has Miami evolved in recent years to get to this point? Walker explained that while head coach Jim Larrañaga hasn’t changed at all, his roster has. Only three contributors from the 2020-21 team remain on the squad: Wong, Walker and guard Harlond Beverly. Larrañaga surrounded them with key additions from the transfer portal in Miller, Pack and forward Norchad Omier.
Voilà.
“I’m not saying that the players that I played with weren’t great players, because they were, but it was just like the coaches made a change in the roster, a little bit of change in the game plan and brought in the right pieces,” Walker said. “We just started to make a change. Coach L is extremely big on routine, so he’s been doing the same thing since I’ve gotten here — same routine, same timing, same schedules. Not really much has changed, it’s just the mindset of certain people has changed.”
Walker says earning a trip to the Final Four in Houston “would mean absolutely everything to me,” and of course, he has some experience playing deep into big tournaments. Perry Hall won MPSSAA 4A state titles in 2017 and 2018 with Walker, who got called up to the varsity squad for the first playoff run before joining the team for good the following year.
Walker then spent the 2018-19 school year at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire, committing to Miami in October 2018 as a consensus three-star forward. But in some ways, Perry Hall is where it all started for Walker.
“Perry Hall is home in a way because I went to school there but it is not glamorous,” Walker said. “At the time, we were going through significant issues with the school and violence and stuff like that. But it’s just understanding that you have to do whatever you have to do to put the work in to be where you want to be.”
The Baltimore native has brought a little bit of that mentality down to South Florida.
“We always feel like our back is against the wall and no one ever pays attention to our city because of the things that go on in our city. So that’s just something we wear with pride,” Walker said. “We’re Baltimore basketball players playing at the highest level of the game, achieving the highest of achievements. That’s something that we’re all striving to be, we’re all striving to do.”
For more from Walker, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Tessa Mortensen/Miami Athletics