Against South Carolina, UK basketball will face a former Kentucky prep star
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UK basketball’s next SEC game is at South Carolina on Tuesday night.
- The Gamecocks feature 6-foot-7 freshman forward EJ Walker.
- Walker was a Kentucky high school basketball star at Lloyd Memorial in Erlanger.
Kentucky high school boys basketball has of late been producing top-level college talent.
Recent years have seen several players depart the commonwealth’s prep ranks for Division I playing opportunities.
Several of these players have become household names because of their contributions to the Wildcats. The likes of Reed Sheppard (North Laurel), Trent Noah (Harlan County), Travis Perry (Lyon County) and Malachi Moreno (Great Crossing) all fall in this category. But plenty of other former Kentucky high school players — after making their names locally — have left the state to begin their college careers.
Mark Pope’s Wildcats will be facing one such player Tuesday night.
As UK (17-10 overall and 8-6 in SEC games) looks to snap a three-game losing slump at South Carolina (12-15, 3-11), Pope will have to game plan against EJ Walker, a 6-foot-7 freshman forward from Northern Kentucky.
A native of Florence, Walker emerged as a Kentucky prep standout at Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger. Walker totaled 1,924 points and 1,196 rebounds for the Juggernauts across five varsity seasons, which made Walker the all-time leading scorer in Lloyd Memorial’s history. He accomplished this feat while being coached by his father, Mike.
Walker — who finished the 2025 recruiting cycle as a three-star prospect and as the No. 283 player nationally in the 247Sports Composite rankings — was an early commit to South Carolina. He pledged to join Lamont Paris’ program in May 2024, choosing the Gamecocks at the end of a recruiting process that reportedly involved more than 50 visits. Ohio State, Purdue and Wisconsin were the other finalists in Walker’s recruitment.
Walker was the second-highest ranked college prospect in Kentucky’s 2025 senior class behind Moreno, a five-star recruit who earned McDonald’s All-American honors last year.
“EJ Walker is an extremely intelligent player. Then he’s also an extremely intelligent basketball guy. There are some really smart people that, they get on the basketball court and basketball just doesn’t make sense to them,” Paris said at SEC Media Days in October. “He’s very intelligent on the basketball court. You don’t have to tell him things multiple times very often... He absorbs things.”
Walker has played in 17 of USC’s 27 games this season, including two starts during SEC play earlier this month. Walker is averaging 2.9 points and 2.4 rebounds in 14.2 minutes per game while shooting 48.7% from the field.
The fact that Walker has provided anything to the Gamecocks’ on-court product this season is a surprise.
The initial plan was for Walker to redshirt the 2025-26 season, but that didn’t stick. It took until Dec. 6 for Walker to play in his first game for South Carolina, but he’s appeared in all but two games since.
Following Walker’s college debut in an early December home win over Stetson, Paris explained how he came to the decision to play Walker this season.
“I said it in jest maybe the first time, and then I said it again, and then I started saying it to my assistant coaches,” Paris said after the Stetson game on Dec. 6. “... His dad’s a high school basketball coach, so I told one of my assistant coaches, I said, ‘Call his dad. Just call and tell him what I’m seeing and what I keep saying on a regular basis.’ Couple weeks go by, and then it’s no longer just calling to tell him that, it’s like, let’s see if this is something that everyone would be interested in doing.”
Most recently, Walker had three points — making his first 3-pointer in nearly a month — in South Carolina’s home win Saturday over Mississippi State. This snapped a seven-game losing streak for South Carolina, which still sits near the bottom of the SEC standings.
“Tremendous young man. Got a good personality. He loves basketball,” Paris said of Walker at SEC Media Days. “You think that would be something that goes with it, but not always. He really loves basketball. He wants to get better. We’re really excited about EJ.”
