Nebraska's matchup with K-State means more for KC native Derrick Walker
Saturday night’s game against Kansas State is significant to Nebraska for various reasons. Not as though Derrick Walker needed any additional motivation for this one.
A native of Kansas City, Missouri, the sixth-year senior forward will make a homecoming of sorts when the Huskers take the court at KC’s T-Mobile Center.
Walker attended Raytown High School for three years, just a 15-minute drive from where NU will take on the Wildcats. As one could expect, tickets to the game have been in high demand from Walker’s many family members and friends in the area.
He’s had to scrounge up as many extra tickets from his teammates as possible to accommodate the roughly 30-40 people that will make up his cheering section.
“This is the first time that I’ve gotten to play in KC since being in college, so it’ll be very fun,” Walker said. “Just playing right in the middle of home and also playing a Kansas team, that’ll be really fun. I’m excited.”
One last chance to prove KSU wrong
A three-star prospect in the 2017 class, Walker was rated the No. 2 player in Kansas during his post-graduate season at prep power Sunrise (Kansas) Academy.
Though he was only two hours south of Manhattan, the 6-foot-9, 245-pounder did not receive an offer from Kansas State. In fact, the Wildcats never even recruited him.
Walker committed to Tennessee and then transferred to Nebraska in 2019. He has no regrets about how his college basketball career played out, but there is admittedly some extra fuel behind getting one last chance to show KSU what it missed out on.
“K-State didn’t recruit me; Mizzou didn’t recruit me; Kansas didn’t recruit me,” Walker said. “So it was bittersweet, just because that’s the hometown. When you first go to college, you don’t really want to go super far, especially when you have such good programs around you. If I ever get a chance to play those teams, I want to kill them.”
Hoiberg is no stranger to success in Kansas City
Though Walker is a Kansas City native, he has never played a collegiate game at T-Mobile Center, formerly known as the Sprint Center.
No current Husker has played in the building before. Head coach Fred Hoiberg, however, knows the arena as well as anyone.
During his time as head coach at Iowa State, Hoiberg went 8-4 in Kansas City from 2010-15. That included back-to-back Big 12 Tournament championships in 2014 and ’15.
Hoiberg said there shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment for the Huskers in the 18,972-seat T-Mobile Center. But he should have plenty of fond memories come rushing back once he arrives in KC.
“I’ve got a lot of great memories in that building,” Hoiberg said. “Cutting down the nets in back-to-back years, winning Big 12 Tournament championships, is something I’ll always going to remember.”
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