Sept. 15, 2006
The Nova Notebook, by Villanova director of media relations Mike Sheridan, appears each Friday from September through February and monthly from April through in August. This week we take a break from our portraits of Villanova's crop of incoming freshmen to spend time with former Villanova guard Kyle Lowry. The features on Villanova's freshmen will resume next week.
It is a September afternoon on Villanova's West Campus. The temperatures outside St. Mary's Gym are in the 80s and the air inside is thick and humid. On this day, the gym is empty save for a photographer and his assistant assembling equipment near center court.
Near the south side of the building a door stands open. There is a walkway with a small stone wall and it was there that 24 months before a newcomer to the Villanova men's basketball team was interviewed for the first time as a collegian. At the time he was coping with the first real setback of his hoops career - an August injury to his knee that resulted in a torn anterior cruciate ligament which required surgery.
Then he was stoic and focused on his rehab.
On this day, in September 2006, he walks back into St. Mary's from the opposite end of the building. Slam Magazine is here to photograph him for a series of stories that will run during the course of 2006-07.
Even Kyle Lowry, confident always in his basketball skill, marvels at the fast track his career has taken since the seemingly dark days of September 2004.
"Wow," he says with a smile. "I have actually sat down and thought about that. I really only played a year and a half of college basketball. I'm surprised by that. I never even thought about going to the NBA back then. I just wanted to get back and get healthy.
"Having Randy Foye, Allan Ray, Jason Fraser, Chris Charles, Baker Dunleavy, Curtis Sumpter, and those guys on that team I just wanted those guys to have the best careers they could possibly have. I wanted to hurry back and help as much as I could."
The 6-1 guard from Cardinal Dougherty High School did that and more. In his two seasons on the Main Line, the Wildcats fashioned a 52-13 (.800) record and won five NCAA Tournament games. From his first day in uniform, on Dec. 31, 2004 against Penn, through his final outing in the Elite Eight last March, Lowry brought energy, quickness and a relentless will to the `Cats that won't soon be forgotten.
It was that will that first became evident during his rehab from the knee injury in the fall of 2004. The conventional wisdom, which extended to head coach Jay Wright and his staff, was that the nature of the injury would force Lowry to sit out the duration of 2004-05. Even Lowry himself believed that he was destined to watch in street clothes for the balance of that season.
"I told Coach (Wright), I wanted my whole freshman year, I wanted to redshirt," he recalls.
Surgery was performed by Villanova team orthopedist Dr. Rob Good on Sept. 24. The procedure went well yet Lowry was in the unfamiliar role of merely observing when practice began in mid-October. Yet he watched intently and absorbed nuances that would later amaze the coaching staff.
"It was kind of a learning situation," he says now. "You just want to know why things are happening. I was asking questions to know why we were doing things a certain way. Coach was probably a little frustrated with me because he had to explain everything to the team and then answer my questions. But he did a good job of communicating with me so that I was kind of on track with everything when I did get out there."
That knowledge would prove invaluable to Lowry. He was cleared to resume practicing prior to Christmas, an event that was not entirely unexpected. When he took the court, though, there was remarkably little rust. When watching practice that week, it was impossible for an outsider unaware of the circumstances to have detected any weakness in Lowry. There was no brace or even a sleeve to indicate where the surgery had been performed.
As the Wildcats prepared for a New Year's Eve game against the Quakers, Wright met with Lowry and his mother, Marie Holloway.
"It was crazy," Lowry says now. "You go from thinking `I'm definitely going to redshirt' to `I want to play.' When I got on the court, I felt good. I really felt like I could help and I wanted to do what I could for my teammates."
Lowry donned his uniform for the first time that afternoon at the Pavilion. His first basket came on an up-and under the backboard move along the baseline. For the rest of that year, he became a key ignitor off the bench until another torn ACL - this one belonging to Sumpter - gave him the chance to become a starter in the Syracuse region semifinal against North Carolina. With Lowry scoring 18 points and Foye 28, Villanova nearly upended the eventual champions, losing 67-66.
When Sumpter was shelved again with the same injury in October of 2005, the coaching staff elected to insert Lowry into the starting lineup. It meant the Wildcats would send four guards under 6-4 (Foye, Ray, Lowry and Mike Nardi) on to the floor each night but the results were spectacular - a 28-5 season and top 10 national ranking all season long.
"People still talk to me about the four guards," he says. "What I always try to let people know is that we were four basketball players and didn't think of ourselves as guards. Plus, we had a great team with us. There was Will Sheridan, Jason Fraser, Chris Charles, Curtis Sumpter even though he wasn't healthy, Shane Clark, Bilal Benn, Dwayne Anderson, Ross Condon, Dante Cunningham, Frank Tchuisi and Baker Dunleavy too. We were a cohesive unit and it wasn't just four guys."
Lowry's role in the success raised the issue of his possible early exit for the NBA as the 2005-06 campaign rolled along. He worked hard to ignore it.
"During the year Coach (Wright) and I had one conversation about it and that was the end of it," he says. "I really kept my mind on what we were doing as a team. Then, when the season ended we had another conversation. Coach talked to some people and there was a little buzz about me. So I decided to put my name in and I knew that I had the support of my family, my coaches and my team."
With all the excitement about the opportunity of a lifetime, however, Lowry looked long and hard at what he would leave behind if he elected to leave with two years of eligibility remaining.
"It was hard to leave," he says. "I love this place. My two years here were probably the best two years of my life. I was in a great situation, had great classes with great teachers, met a lot of nice people, had teammates who were like brothers to me and played for one of the best coaches in the country. It was a great experience.
"The coaches really helped me off the court even more than they did on it. Coach (Pat) Chambers, Coach (Ed) Pinckney, Coach (Brett) Gunning and especially Coach Wright showed me what it took to be a man. They helped me mature and I really appreciate what they did for me."
On June 18, Lowry announced he would remain in the NBA Draft. Ten days later, the Grizzlies made him their No. 1 selection (24th overall). In July, he got a taste of the league in California during Summer League play. Later, he closed on his new home in Memphis and training camp is only weeks away.
"I'm excited about it," he states. "I'm playing for a great organization."
Lowry was on campus often in early September and says he will be an off-season fixture in his native Philadelphia in years to come. The photo shoot here was done in advance of his work as 2006-07's NBA Rookie Diarist in Slam. (Nevin Field House and the Pavilion were unavailable due to the university's presidential inauguration festivities). Not long after the photographer arrives, he hands Lowry a Memphis warm-up suit that appears to have been fitted for 7-0 Pau Gasol. Soon he is dribbling an NBA ball for the cameras. Despite the heat and the heavy outfit, he is loose and in his element. It is clearly a great time in the life of Kyle Lowry.
Through the open doorway at the south end of St. Mary's one can still see the stone walkway. September 2004 never seemed so far away.
