'Unbelievable’ journey to Louisville basketball: Noah Waterman continues to show toughness

‘Unbelievable’ journey to Louisville basketball: Noah Waterman continues to show toughness

Posted by author February 10, 2025 Basketball

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Noah Waterman had zero scholarship offers after averaging 33.9 points, 12.6 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.9 blocks as a senior in high school.
“It’s still kind of unbelievable,” Noah’s oldest brother, Seth, said “from where he started to where he is now.”

Kim Waterman can recall the photo from memory. It’s her youngest of six sons, Noah Waterman, at his happiest.

There he is, propping himself up on Denny Crum Court, roaring back at a sea of Louisville basketball fans going ballistic after he muscled over two Eastern Kentucky defenders a decisive, go-ahead layup with 1.2 seconds to spare on Dec. 28 at the KFC Yum! Center. The sixth-year forward’s right thumb is wrapped heavily in black tape after it got caught in a jersey and broken a week earlier, during the Cardinals’ win at Florida State.

In the days that followed that victory over the Colonels, he had four pins surgically installed in his shooting hand.

“I’m not trying to let our team down,” he said; which explains why he played through the pain and, in a chaotic sequence of events, came up with the basket that saved U of L from a Quad 4 loss that would have hurt its NCAA Tournament résumé and perhaps drastically altered its red-hot start to 2025.

His mother shared his reaction to the moment watching from 650 miles away in the small town of Savannah, New York.

“That was my face; like, ‘Ahhhhh,'” Kim Waterman said. “It was amazing.”

So, too, is his journey.

“It’s life, man,” he said. “A lot of things happen in life; you’ve just got to get through it.”

The second-youngest child among eight siblings — homeschooled from grades K-12 by a mother, who, as a family friend described it, scrapped “just to put food on the table and keep the heat on.” His father left for good when he was 8 years old; and their occasional conversations since, he said, have been mostly limited to two words: “Good game.”

A growth spurt that took him from 6 feet, 2 inches as an underclassman to pushing 6-11 as an upperclassman playing for Finger Lakes Christian School. Zero scholarship offers after averaging 33.9 points, 12.6 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.9 blocks as a senior. Only a few bites when his coaches sent a highlight tape out to 50 programs across the country. A season-ending ankle injury as a freshman. Three trips into and out of the NCAA transfer portal. And yet, he’s exactly where he needs to be; putting it all on the line for Pat Kelsey‘s revival.

“Noah is, I think, one of the great stories of this team right now,” the coach said. “It’s giving our guys so much courage and inspiration.”

“It’s still kind of unbelievable,” added his oldest brother, Seth, “from where he started to where he is now.”

It began with a YouTuber named SuperHandles. Ben Waterman was obsessed, dedicating his days to copying the trainer’s moves in the road outside his family’s home. One of his brothers, Josiah, was quick to follow.

“Noah,” his mother said, “was kind of watching from afar” at first. But, once he got in on the action as an eighth grader, they went all out; enlisting their grandfather to help them build a modest court in their backyard and installing a hoop in their barn for those rare winter days when the snow and the cold were too much to handle.

“They would go out and shovel off the court,” Kim Waterman said. “They’d hook up lights at night and go out there and play. They made it work.”

“You had to shoot low (in the barn), because the ceiling was, like, maybe, 14 feet or something,” Ben Waterman added. “We used to be out there in winter gloves and stuff. It was wild.”

Seth Waterman attributes his youngest brother’s toughness to his spot in the pecking order. For example: Ben Waterman, who had a standout career at Finger Lakes Community College, claims the Division I hooper has “never punked me in a game. Not to this day.

“You hear (that), little bro?” he said, breaking the fourth wall. “You ain’t never punked me.”

That kind of talk would put a chip on just about anyone’s shoulder. The circumstances they shared — and the example their mother set while trying to provide for them — certainly factored in, as well.

With nine children in a single-parent household, money was tight. So much so that, as Kim Waterman told a video production team from BYU for a profile of her youngest son in 2023, she once had her kids bag up toilet paper that was being torn up and thrown about for fun at a youth group Christmas party. It was that hard to come by.

“Me and my brothers would do odd jobs: landscaping, raking up leaves,” Noah Waterman said. “Anything we could just to make a little money.”

And when they weren’t doing that, they were losing themselves in the game.

“They had nothing else besides basketball,” said John Sandlas, who coached Noah Waterman in high school. “They put everything they had into it, and it’s paid off.”

Noah Waterman had roughly 100 people make the 40-mile drive from Savannah to attend Louisville’s blowout win over Syracuse on Jan. 14 at the JMA Wireless Dome. It was only his mother’s second time watching him play collegiately in person; due to multiple head injuries over the years that have limited her mobility.

He gave her and everyone else there to see him something to cheer about early, when he came up with a steal and a dunk immediately after checking in off the bench during the first half. That, however, ended up being his only basket on five attempts in 10 minutes of run.

Still, his fans lingered around the court well after the final buzzer to shower him with adoration when he emerged from the visiting locker room. When he turned the corner and saw them waiting, he smiled like someone who just went for 30 points — at the very least.

That’s the kid they grew up watching — Finger Lakes Christian School’s all-time leading scorer. But, due to a lack of consistent competition and some injuries he battled as a junior and senior, no college had come calling before he graduated.

Sandlas knew you couldn’t coach his 6-11 frame and his knack for rising to the occasion. So he and his staff went on the offensive in a last-ditch effort to get him noticed. When he committed to Niagara in August 2019, per a report from the Finger Lakes Times, he also had offers from Binghamton, George Mason, St. Bonaventure and Vanderbilt.

“Niagara was, really, the only school that bit at first; and then a few others trickled in toward the end,” Sandlas said. “It was late. I mean, we didn’t even go visit Niagara until the end of July, a couple weeks before school was going to start. And here we are, four schools later.”

Indeed, Noah Waterman’s story is a testament to the power of the transfer portal — and determination.

“It’s all about working out and not worrying about anybody else but yourself,” he said. “The results will come.”

It took two stops for things to start clicking. From 2020-22 at Detroit Mercy, he averaged 9.6 points on 48.6% shooting (44% from 3) with 4.2 rebounds in 26.2 minutes per game. Those numbers caught the attention of Mark Pope at BYU, who developed him into an important piece on a team that became only the program’s second since 2016 to reach the NCAA Tournament. Pope, who has since replaced John Calipari at Kentucky, took a moment to show his appreciation for him while previewing this season’s Battle of the Bluegrass.

“I get to be here right now because of Noah Waterman, and that’s no overstatement,” he said. “I love him for that.

“We’re going to have a beautiful relationship forever. He’s a really special kid.”

Kelsey, of course, saw the video BYU put together on Noah Waterman when he was luring him to Louisville. It was “touching” and “emotional,” he said — and convinced him that the veteran big man was a player who is fully committed to one of his core tenets, the Power of the Unit.

That goes a long way, especially considering it hasn’t wavered during a season in which he’s taken a step back in scoring, shooting percentages, rebounding and playing time.

“He gets a lot of criticism,” Terrence Edwards Jr. said, “but he’s one of the toughest guys I’ve probably ever played with.”

“I don’t take lightly, or think lightly on, what his role is right now,” Kelsey added. “It’s not maybe the minutes that he’s used to; but he’s had a major impact on our team just through the resiliency and toughness that he’s shown — not only through the adversity he’s facing this year but also what he’s faced throughout his entire life. I’m really proud of him. He’s a tough, tough guy and a true representative of what we want our program to be all about.”

Noah Waterman said that can be traced back to something his mom taught him and his siblings: “Your blood will always be there for you.”

“We really took that to heart,” he said. “To this day, anything they need, I’m going to help them out.”

Right now, the best way he knows how is to keep the ball bouncing — powering through the thumb injury but doing so in a manner that ensures he’s at his healthiest when the Cards enter the postseason.

“We’re going to really, really, really need him,” Kelsey said. “Not only in the role he’s in right now — that thing’s going to expand, and we’re going to really need him down the stretch.”

But, when it finally stops for good, he doesn’t see himself straying too far from the court.

“I’m going to train people,” he said, “and really give back to the kids who grew up not knowing too much about basketball, like I did, and show them that they’ve got a chance to go play Division I — like, your dreams can come true if you just keep working at it.”

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.