Written By Sam Ekstrom
The common adage is that big men develop late. It takes them longer to figure out how to use their size and strength – which probably worked like a charm against puny high school kids – in an effective way against opposing bigs of equal size and strength. Odds are, many Division-I centers didn’t need any post moves in high school besides catching, turning and shooting while the defense leapt clumsily, and unsuccessfully, to knock the ball away.
Such was probably the case with Gophers center Mo Walker, who entered the U of M at 340 pounds. He was huge, probably making Jerry Kill envious that he didn’t recruit Walker to play offensive tackle. What Kill likely came to realize, along with the rest of the Gophers faithful, was that Walker was passive, uncomfortable and unhealthy. He missed most of his freshman year with a knee injury and was redshirted the following season. As a sophomore, Walker played at 310 pounds – an improvement – but didn’t have the stamina to play more than brief spurts in games or practices.
Heading into his junior season with a new coach, Walker knew something had to change. In order to transform his game, he had to transform his body and his mindset first.
Pitino’s ultimatum
As Walker’s eligibility slowly slipped away, it looked like Tubby Smith’s roll of the dice to recruit the Ontario native had come up empty. Here was a guy in the top 1 percent, size-wise, in the world that didn’t have the assertiveness to play ball in the Big Ten.
Enter, Richard Pitino, who saw an opportunity to capitalize on this seemingly lost project.
“[Mo] needed to change,” said Pitino on Jan. 27. “People, when I got here, said, 'Well, he can't play in your style at that weight.' He can't play in any style at that weight. It doesn't matter what you're doing.”
Walker embarked on a strict dieting and conditioning regiment that was detailed in a Yahoo Sports article. He trimmed down by 50 pounds, better enabling him to keep up with Pitino’s fast-paced system. With predecessor Trevor Mbakwe graduated, Walker had been given a choice: Either lose the weight and play big minutes or stay the same and don’t play at all.
"People think we've had this big, long strategic plan, and we've had to be on him every single day,” Pitino said in the Yahoo article, “but it was really simple. I just told him he wasn't going to play unless he lost a lot of weight, and that was really it. He's done the rest."
Walker now plays at 255 pounds. For comparison, Ohio State’s Amir Williams plays at 250 and Iowa’s Adam Woodbury at 245. Walker still outweighs them by a few pounds, which is valuable in under-the-basket battles, but he’s certainly at no disadvantage with his quickness anymore.
“My weight loss; I'm proud of myself for that,” said Walker last week. “That's a tough thing to do. Coach has really pushed me and helped me in that way. I'm definitely proud of that.”
Armed with the agility, versatility and verticality that his weight loss brought along, Walker still had work to do to grow comfortable as a basketball player in his leaner body. Just like when a video game character acquires a special skill or tool, the operator still needs to figure out the best way to utilize it. For Walker, calibrating his newfound abilities meant adjusting his attitude.
Unleashing the beast
While Walker isn’t saying, ‘Hey, pass me the ball, eh!’ or filling his Gatorade bottle with maple syrup, he is stereotypically Canadian in the sense that he’s friendly and laid back; not all that aggressive in his natural personality. He enjoys chilling with his equally laid back roommate Andre Hollins.
On the other end of the spectrum is Coach Pitino, who frequently slaps guys on the back, sheds his suit jacket out of referee-related frustration and was recently spotted yelling at his assistant coach Ben Johnson during a close game. Needless to say, he’s an intense individual. But his opposite personality was exactly the catalyst Walker needed to elevate his game.
“You know you've got to play tough,” said Pitino. “So sometimes it's lighting a fire under him a little bit, and other times maybe he just needs to get punched first to react a little bit. We need that from him.”
Pitino, showing an affinity for using punching analogies, also recalled a moment with Walker back in December after the Gophers beat North Dakota.
“I always joke, 'What do you need me to do? Punch you right before you walk out or something to wake you up?'”
“I want to set the tone early,” said Walker that same night. “The guys in the locker room will be pushing me and telling me they can get more out of me, and I can do more, so I just try to take that chip on my shoulder, play with a chip on my shoulder and be more aggressive to set the tone to get my guys fired up.
“I've been more of a laid-back guy,” he continued. “If you know me off the court, I'm really laid back and chill, but when I get on the court, I can be a different person. I can be whoever I want to be, really, so I let it all out.”
Walker, in a way, is mirroring fellow senior and good friend Elliott Eliason, who acts as an Energizer Bunny off the bench.
“It’s just always been part of my game since high school,” said Eliason. “I’ve just always enjoyed playing, so I play with emotion. Sometimes to a fault probably. I care about the game a lot.”
The difference is that Eliason can’t shut off his energy. It’s his default setting. Walker, on the other hand, needs to flip his own switch. There are times early in games when Walker will out-muscle his defender for a bucket at the rim, then take off yelling and pounding his chest down the court. That’s calculated. That’s his way of lighting his own fire; the kindling is already there – it just needs a spark.
Against Illinois on Jan. 27, Walker had two points at halftime, and the Gophers only led by three against an undermanned Illini team. In the locker room, Pitino told the team that he wanted them to come back bruised and bloody after the game – figuratively, of course.
Walker finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds in a dominant second half performance … and needed four stitches for a gash near his left eye.
“He said it was going to be a war,” Walker said of Pitino’s halftime address. “If we're all not putting our bodies on the line and putting ourselves on the line to win this one, then we really didn't want it that badly.”
This season, Walker is averaging 12 points and seven rebounds per game, recorded his first two career double-doubles and came a handful of rebounds away from several more thanks to a new commitment to rebounding the basketball. After Minnesota’s win over Illinois, Illini head coach John Groce credited Walker with leading Minnesota’s dominance on the glass.
“I think it’s an attitude,” said Pitino about Walker’s improved rebounding. “It is fighting through that adversity a little better and just continuing to understand that guys are going to slap down at you, guys are going to try to go over your back and you've just got to be physically stronger and tougher.”
Perhaps the only unfortunate aspect of Walker’s season is that it’s his last. Now that the big fella finally figured things out, he may be down to his final dozen collegiate basketball games. Then the teaching process starts all over with raw newcomer Bakary Konate, ostensibly next year’s starting center.
But in a lost season highlighted by inconsistent guard play and poor late-game execution, Walker’s mean streak has been one of the nicest facets.
“On the court you've got to compete,” said Pitino, “and you've got to be mean, and you've got to be tough. I think he's developed that a lot.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.