USA Basketball: Five-star Walker talks recruiting
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Five-star shooting guard Lonnie Walker has had a pretty quiet recruitment given his elite status. That's about to change soon as the No. 20 player in the class of 2017 is in the midst of taking his official visits.
A 6-foot-5 scoring machine from Reading (Pa.) High, Walker showed out during the first session of USA Basketball's October Minicamp on Saturday. Though he's been off the summer circuit, he's never stopped working.
"I'm working on getting stronger," Walker told Rivals.com. "I'm up to 206 pounds right now so since the summer I've gained about 10 or 15 pounds. I'm getting stronger, getting to attacking more and consistently shooting day to day."
Down to Arizona, Kentucky, Miami, Syracuse and Villanova, Walker is getting ready to hit the visit circuit hard. He took his first official visit to Miami last weekend and he's getting ready to hit the road for visits the next four weekends.
He'll start with Arizona's famed Red-Blue scrimmage next weekend before hitting Kentucky, Villanova and Syracuse in that order.
Walker took time to discuss each program.
Arizona- "Coach Miller is saying how well I fit his team. The fact that DeAndre Ayton committed is even a bigger thing with having him and potentially me as a guard and him as the center. He's looking at the bigger picture of how well I can fit in with them."
Kentucky- "Coach Calipari's message is basically do you want to win? Do you want to win and do you want to make the NBA and make money? The thing I like about him is he doesn't cut around the outside of the bush, he goes straight through the bush. He says he's going to have to offer six guys every year to come in as freshman and six freshman are going to have to play so whoever wants that spot is going to have to earn it. Nothing is guaranteed. I like that he's going to make you fight for it."
Miami- "It was great visit down there. I got to hang around with JaQuan Newton who is a former Team Final player. I liked the environment. I meshed with the players, I meshed with the coaches really well and it was a great, great, great visit."
Syracuse- "They are basically saying that they can make me a way better guard than almost anybody else can. They have great assistants. Gerry McNamara and Coach Mike Hopkins are great, intense and exciting coaches. I feel like they can make me a better guard overall with my handling, shooting and overall feel."
Villanova- "It's really not even an approach anymore. It's just a bond now. They aren't worrying about telling me that I'm a priority because we've already been through those things. They are just saying we want you, we really love your game, you would fit here and it's close to home. There's so many factors that make them strong and I'm only 45 minutes away. The last three or four years I've really built a great bond with coach Jay Wright."
With four straight visits ahead of him, Walker is appreciative of the position he is in. He's also nervous about the process and looking forward to finding out which school he will choose in the early signing period.
"I can't even explain what's going through my head," said Walker. How are they going to go, who am I going to hang out with? I have so many questions that go through my head that sometimes I can't even sleep. I'm just excited. To be a kid from Reading Pennsylvania seeing his dreams come true and hard work pay off is amazing.
"I'll be looking at the overall environment and building a bond with the coach. I don't want to go to a school where the coach feeds me the wrong stuff and i go there and it's the complete opposite. I'm just going to be talking to the coaches, talking to the players and talking to the alumni to see how it really is and I'll go from there."