How They’re Doing. One in a series : Injuries Cut Walker’s College Career Short

The way it ended, Keith Walker scored about as many points during his college basketball career as he did on one good night in high school--43.

Walker spent his high school career at Brea-Olinda lighting up scoreboards. He scored 50 once against Los Angeles Loyola and averaged 32.9 in the 1989-90 season, leading all of Orange County.

But his college career is over now, after nine games at California and 14 at UC Irvine.

Walker spent too much of the last three years hobbled by foot pain. That’s when he wasn’t standing in the nacho-and-hot-dog line before UC Irvine games during his redshirt-transfer year, or watching a lot of mediocre-or-worse basketball from the bench.

It’s not the worst thing for Walker that it’s over. After one operation on his foot and countless days of pain, he decided to stop playing.

“I could have had surgery and sat out a year, but I only have a year of school left (to graduate),” said Walker, who was bothered by chronic bone spurring in his feet. “The doctors said I really had no chance of getting back to the condition I was in in high school. I had to weigh the factor of whether I wanted to sit out a year and hope it would improve.”

The scales tipped to the side that said: “It’s over.”

“You love the game when you’re healthy,” said Walker, 21. “But it takes your desire to play away when every time you’re done playing, it hurts. I wasn’t going to play after college anyway, so this is a two-year jump on the rest of my life, preparing to get a real job in the real world.”

The decision to let go was made easier, Walker says, because “it wasn’t going too well, anyway.” In high school, he had dreamed of playing professionally. His older brother, Kevin, who played at UCLA, has made it, and is about to begin his third season playing in Japan for the Nikko Griffins.

Keith won’t get there. Kevin is 6-feet-10, five inches taller. And though he suffers from the same bone spurring condition, the structure of Kevin’s feet is just different enough that he doesn’t have the extreme pain Keith does.

Keith had other problems making the transition from high school. When he went to Cal, he found what worked for him before wouldn’t work in college, even without the added burden of his foot problems. At Brea-Olinda, he was a skinny, 6-foot-5 kid who was tall enough to score in the lane and a good enough outside shooter to keep the defense honest. His bread-and-butter was driving for a layup--or better yet, drawing a foul and cashing in with a deadeye shot from the free-throw line.

“I got to college, and in the Pac-10 Conference, I’m not at all quick enough to drive around people and get to the basket,” Walker said. “It kind of bothered me that when I went to college, (coaches) envisioned me as a three-point shooter.”

He left Cal, a school he says he liked immensely, because he didn’t enjoy playing for Coach Lou Campanelli, who was fired last spring because of player complaints. Walker said the main reason he left was because he didn’t like the way Campanelli “deals with players, the way he treats players.”

“Everything people found out about this past year, I could have told you two years ago,” Walker said. “The fact that the players were so good this year (Jason Kidd among them) just gave them the authority to speak, because nobody would want to see them leave.”

He found a new home at Irvine, where Coach Rod Baker had a wide-open door for transfers he thought could help the struggling program quickly.

But even after his redshirt year, Walker never found a niche at Irvine. He didn’t play much, and when he did, he never seemed to get settled.

“I don’t know if I ever saw what he would have been able to do because he never got himself to the point where he could perform a lot of days in a row (because of the foot problems),” Baker said. “It was never his fault. I didn’t ever believe he didn’t want to play. I thought it really killed him many nights not being able to do what he had been used to.”

When Walker decided to give up basketball after last season--he still plays occasional pick-up games, but not without pain--Baker decided to continue his scholarship. Walker will work in the athletic department in exchange.

“You make a commitment to a person,” Baker said. “I don’t think he tried to go hurt himself. He’s a bright kid. He needs to finish school and go on.”

That’s exactly what Walker is doing. An English major, he is interested in writing or perhaps broadcasting, and he is beginning to think about internships.

As for basketball--”I saw Boston, Kansas City, New York,” he said, recalling some of Irvine’s trips last year. “And I still have the records at Brea-Olinda.”

The hopes he once had for basketball have ended, but he has had a couple of years to get used to it.

“It took its toll over time,” he said.