Photo. Kansas State University

To coincide with the start of the college basketball season, we’re putting you up on some players to keep an eye on from now until the Final Four in San Antonio.

BILL WALKER, Kansas State

The kid whose name became synonymous with O.J. Mayo‘s throughout high school all but fell off the map in his first crack at blazing his own trail. After a surprise ruling made North College Hill (Ohio) rim-wrecker Bill Walker eligible to play college ball one year earlier than everyone thought he’d be, the 6-6 Vince Carter body-double took his game to Kansas State, where he was expected to dunk all over 11 of the Big 12 while leading a K-State resurgence under coach Bob Huggins.

Turns out it didn’t exactly work out that way. Not even close.

Walker started off his freshman year solid. He went for double figures in his first four games, including a 19-points effort against USC, which would coincidentally end up being Mayo’s school of choice. But in Walker’s much-anticipated national TV debut, he was underwhelming at best. Against a defensively tough Xavier team, Walker was held to eight points on 4-for-14 shooting, barely getting a chance to show any of the explosiveness and hops for which he’d become famous — almost mythical — in high school. Three days after the Xavier game his season was over, a ruptured ACL putting Walker on the shelf and his future in doubt. Kansas State went on to miss the Tournament, and during the offseason, Huggins left for a job at West Virginia.

Back for his sophomore year, Walker is healthy and has super-freshman Michael Beasley at his side. He also has a lot of questions to answer. How good is he really without O.J. setting him up and absorbing any pressure? Is he just a leaper with nothing else in his game? Will those freakish athletic gifts be taken away by the knee injury?

If Bill Walker has any hope of joining his boy O.J. — not to mention Beasley — as a Lottery pick in the near future, it’s time for him to provide some resounding answers.