Big Man Headed North

Walt Waters of Detroit, Mich., has signed a National Letter of Intent to play men's basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Waters, a 6-foot-10, 260-pound center, is considered one of the top junior college big men in the country and was a consensus top-100 player in high school.

"The greatest challenge in recruiting is to recruit quality bigs. High-major programs will often times speculate and take good big guys that really can't play on their level, hoping they'll develop," Wisconsin Milwaukee Coach Bruce Pearl said. "We have found a big guy that can play at that level.

"The future of our program has been laid with the signing of Walt Waters. His presence gives us the ability to compete in our league and beyond."

Currently at Schoolcraft Community College in Detroit, Waters signed with Pittsburgh in the early signing period in 2002 and then attended Cleveland State for a semester last year, appearing in 13 games for the Vikings. Waters was a highly-touted recruit out of Detroit Southeastern High School, where he was a three-time all-state honoree. He was rated as the 86th best prospect in the class of 2003 by Rivals.com.

During his senior year of high school, Waters averaged 18 points, seven rebounds and four blocks per game, shooting 63 percent from the field. He was stellar throughout his high school career, in fact, averaging 16 ppg as a freshman, 22 ppg as a sophomore and 19 ppg as a junior. Waters then averaged 4.4 ppg and 4.1 rpg in his 13 games at Cleveland State last year

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