Since the day his father first put the ball in his hands at a young age, Pioneer senior guard DaShawn Walker has worked hard to make his dad proud.

“He was the one who put the ball in my hand and taught me how to play,” Walker said of his father. “Through all this, I just want to make him proud. He has been a big influence on me.”

It would be easy to assume that he has done just that. As a senior leader for the Pioneers men’s basketball team, Walker is quickly getting a reputation as one of the best pure scorers in the Sun Belt Conference.

Walker is currently averaging 17.1 points per game this season, leading the Pioneers and is among the best in the SBC, and he has done all of this while playing through a fairly severe injury.

“He has been playing with a broken foot,” said interim men’s Head Coach Kevin Reynolds. “You can’t forget that, it just shows that he is a tough kid.”

This may not come as a surprise to many who know the way that Walker has worked his way to get to where he is.

Growing up in basketball-crazy Chicago, Walker had an impressive high school career at Simeon Career Academy, in which he utilized his 6-foot-6-inch frame to play the center position for his team.

Walker then took his talents to Indian Hills Community College after graduating from high school.

“It’s one of the best junior colleges in the Midwest,” said Walker on his decision to join the Iowa-based college. “I didn’t want to go to a prep school out East or anything like that. It’s a great junior college and that’s why I chose it.”

Walker spent two seasons playing at IHCC, improving his game to be able to make the position switch from center to guard that he needed to jump to the Division I level.

“In high school, I used to play post,” Walker said. “Getting those two years playing on the perimeter gave me the confidence I needed, while working on my jump shot, to come in here [DU] and play.”

The position switch while playing at IHCC wasn’t the only major impact from his time spent in Iowa that led to Walker joining the Pioneers.

“Once Alex Cox signed, because he was at [IHCC] with me,” said Walker of his decision-making process. “I knew he was a great guy, and he’s the one who influenced me to come here.”

Also, the lure of playing at a strong Division I program helped Walker’s decision.

“Seeing what [DU] did the previous year helped my decision,” said Walker about the Pioneers winning the regular season conference championship and going to the NIT three seasons ago. “Plus, they had [former Pioneer center] Yemi Nicholson coming back, and I could come in and play good minutes. Also, academic wise, you can’t beat DU.”

Since joining the Pioneers, Walker has had only one main goal: improvement.

“As a basketball player, during the summer, you want to improve your game every year,” said Walker. “So during the summer, coach does a great job of having individual workouts and stuff like that, helping us with ball handling and big man post moves, and stuff like that. Getting better and better every year is a goal for me and our team.”

With his strong play of this season, Reynolds feels that Walker has improved extremely.

“The one thing about Walker, that people seem to forget, is that he has improved drastically,” said Reynolds of his team’s leading scorer. “Last year he averaged around 12 or 13 points and increased it to 16 or 17. Whenever you have that type of improvement, it says a lot about the character of a kid.”

Though it would be easy to get caught up in Walker’s statistics this year, he clearly feels that those really don’t define the player that he is.

“I don’t care if I average zero points or 30 points, I just want to win,” Walker said. “I just want to play the game, to win, and whatever the numbers come out of it at the end of the game, so be it.”

In keeping with Walker’s unselfish attitude, his only goals for the rest of the season are for his team and him to continue to get better and hopefully make the NCAA tournament, something that Walker feels his team could do despite a sub .500 record, 2-7 in the SBC.

“Each game, we have gotten better and better,” said Walker of his team. “It gets tough sometimes, but we just have to move on, keep our confidence up and play our DU basketball.”

After this season, Walker hopes to continue to play basketball after picking up his diploma in August. He is looking at playing in Europe and hoping for a possible shot at the NBA.

But, through all the hype and hoopla that may come with attempting to play professional basketball, Walker looks to keep things in perspective.

“I would love to play basketball,” said Walker of his future plans. “Most of all, I just want to get a job that can be able to support my family.”

Walker and the rest of the Pioneers are back in action this Thursday, as they take on the Trojans of Troy University at 6:30 p.m. MT in Troy, Ala.