A lot is hanging on Markel Walkers 19-year-old shoulders. Only the UCLA jersey is evident, flashing her No. 23, digits she chose because only the best wear them.
There are other layers riding those true freshman shoulders; heavy ones coated in expectation, tailored by Coach Nikki Caldwell, who expects Walker to be the concrete upon which title teams are built, upon which NCAA tournament trips are as certain as sunrise.
Walkers first appearance in such trips comes Sunday night. Her eight-seeded Bruins face nine-seed North Carolina State in Minneapolis in the first round of Kansas City Region. If UCLA wins, the likely opponent is top-seed Nebraska on Tuesday.
And if UCLA wins, No. 23 will be why. The numbers dont immediately show it: Walker is second on the team in scoring (10.8) and rebounding (7.4) to sophomore Jasmine Dixon, a transfer from Rutgers.
But Walkers strength is forcing mismatches because she is unusually mobile and adept at ball-handling for her size, and at 6-feet-1-inches, a size fit for most post players in the womens game, she can play all five positions on the court and play them well.
She can get the ball off the rim and take it down the court and out-foot-speed any other post, because her foot speed is better than any other post, so she can just get to the basket and score, Dixon said.
Walker developed that style at a young age. At eight years old, she only played against boys and her uncle only allowed her to play the guard position. He made me basically bring the ball up, be on the wing, she said.
Her growth spurt came when she was about 11, but even in high school, the position she played depended on what mismatch she could create. If I had a little guard on me, they used to post me up, she said. But if I had a big guard on me, they just let me go out and be a guard. Caldwell uses her the same way, and as history has shown with former college stars Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker, a mismatch maker like Walker is a considerable nitrous boost to any college squad.
In womens basketball, when you might not necessarily have five scorers on the floor at the same time, to have a player who, no matter where you put them, theyre going to score thats huge, ESPN womens basketball analyst Rebecca Lobo said.
