In 2011, UConn wasn’t expected to win the NCAA championship. They weren’t coming off back-to-back national titles and expected to be the hunted. The squad was inconsistent and heavily reliant on its guards, Kemba Walker and Big East All-Freshman performer Shabazz Napier. Jim Calhoun’s squad wasn’t even favored to win the conference championship, but the Huskies rode the back of Bronx-born, All-American guard Walker to a stunning Big East Championship over Louisville.
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Kemba Walker Scored Big East Tournament Record 130 Points In Five Games
Walker scored a tournament-record 130 points in five games.
The 6-2 guard from The Bronx Zoo drained an array of acrobatic shots, deft-penetration pull-ups, long-range jumpers and game-clinching buckets to help UConn became the first school to win five games in five days to earn a conference championship.
Kemba Walker Turns Up In 2011 NCAA Tournament
Then, UConn hit the NCAA tourney hot as stolen headphones from Best Buy and Walker’s historic performances elevated him from questionable NBA point guard to bonafide first-round status. They say superstars are made during March Madness and legacies are built on clutch shots and unfortunate failures. Walker is the epitome of that philosophy. He might have finished second to “Vanilla Boy Wonder” Jimmer Fredette in the College Basketball Player of the Year honors, but Walker was clearly a Tournament Titan and the best college player on the planet for the month of March and a few days in April in 2011.
He led UConn with 18 points in an 81-52 first-round win over Bucknell. Then he exploded for 33 points in a 69-58 win over Cincinnati. In a 74-67 regional semifinal win against San Diego State, Walker had an all-time performance with 36 numbers. Connecticut needed every one of Walker’s team-high 20 points to narrowly defeat Arizona 65-63 in the regional final. In the Final Four against powerhouse Kentucky and Terrence Jones, Walker led all scorers with 18 points (he also chipped in 6 boards and 7 assists) as UConn squeaked by the Wildcats 56-55.
The final stroke applied to Walker’s vividly painted college career, was the 16 points he scored in the National Championship game, a 53-41 win over Butler, giving UConn and legendary coach Jim Calhoun their third National C’hip in school history. In the process, Walker was named NCAA Basketball Tournament Most Outstanding Player.
What makes Walker’s story magnificent is that he survived the tough streets of the Bronx, and he did it with strong family support, a killer high school career at Rice and a personality that endeared people to the potency of his character and intelligence as much as his relentless, concrete jungle-honed, gutter game.
“Maybe it’s a story that people from the outside wouldn’t think could happen in the city,” former UConn assistant Andre LaFleur told the Daily News in 2011. “But I saw parents he respected. I saw a respect he had from his school that had nothing to do with his ability as a basketball player. I saw brothers and priests who loved this kid the way coaches are supposed to.”
In trying to find the perfect words to describe the diminutive Bronx Bomber who built his legend playing games at Seward and Rosedale and Parque Del Los Ninos, then had a damn fine career in the pros, Lafleur summed it up best:
“Kemba Walker is an inner-city fairy tale.”
