Sept. 19, 2008

The Nova Notebook, by Villanova director of media relations Mike Sheridan, appears weekly during the fall and into the basketball season and periodically from May through August. In this entry we touch base with senior swingman Dwayne Anderson.

Dwayne Anderson noticed it right away. It was the summer of 2005 and Anderson, fresh from an impressive stint at St. Thomas More in Connecticut, each day made the trek into St. Mary's Gym and marveled at the level of intensity he found there. His new teammates were fresh from a visit to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 and quite determined to grasp an opportunity to do more in the season that lay ahead.

As a native of Washington, D.C., Anderson was no stranger to playing alongside great talent. Ever since he been able to walk, he had trailed along behind his father, Dwayne Anderson Sr., to some of the best pickup games in a region known for its basketball talent. By the time he was a teenager, he was accustomed to testing himself against the best in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

This, though, was something else entirely.

"It was so competitive," he recalls with a smile. "Everyone played so hard."

Those memories of Randy Foye, Kyle Lowry, Allan Ray, Curtis Sumpter and Co. have come back to Anderson of late. The 2008-09 campaign is approaching and each day the product of Silver Spring, Md. sees things in team workouts and open gym sessions that take him back to his earliest days at Villanova.

"Watching Randy and those guys go at it my freshman year has stayed with me," he says. "Our workouts are starting to become like that. It's straight competing and getting after one another. When you finish, you're exhausted. Just from March, I can already tell the difference."

There are, of course, parallels between then and now. As in 2005, Villanova enters the new season coming off a loss to the eventual NCAA champion in the Sweet 16. There are raised expectations, as there were then. And there is a subtler dynamic at work too as the leadership group begins its second season as captains after on the job training as juniors and sophomores.

"Being a leader in this program is something you have to learn," Anderson acknowledges. "We're so close in age that when you get on someone, you don't want them to feel like you're getting on them just because. So when we get past that stage it helps. We can get on guys and criticize them and they can take it back in a positive manner. We're learning that and I think the point is starting to get across."

As a younger player, Anderson was tutored with conviction by Foye and friends, who by 2005-06 had grown more comfortable in providing guidance than they had been in the early stages of 2004-05. Those lessons have stayed with him and now he finds himself, alongside fellow captains Dante Cunningham, Shane Clark and Scottie Reynolds, dispensing wisdom and correcting mistakes when needed.

That role perhaps comes a little bit more naturally to Anderson than it does some of his fellow captains. He is the oldest of three boys in the Anderson household and thus has an appreciation for what goes into being a mentor figure.

"I have two younger brothers that mean the world to me," says Anderson. "They look up to me and that's something I take very seriously."

Last year, David Anderson, the middle of Dwayne Sr. and Michelle Anderson's three sons, started playing organized basketball. When it came time to choose a uniform number, he took note of the No. 22 worn by his eldest brother throughout his basketball career.

"David made a comment to me that is the greatest compliment I have ever received," recalls Dwayne Anderson Jr. "When he started playing basketball last year he said to me that `I'm getting No. 22. I hope I can live up to it.' I always knew my brothers looked up to me. When I heard him say that, though, I was lost for words.

"I look at my teammates the same way I do my brothers. I try to do all I can to set a good example."

Of course, part of the respect Anderson commands in the Villanova locker room has to do with his own career arc. As a rookie in 2005-06, he mostly watched and learned from the likes of All-Americans Foye, Ray and NBA first-round draft choice Lowry. In 2006-07, he had a few early chances to carve a rotation niche but by year's end was on the outside looking in. Finally, he moved into the starting lineup on Feb. 9, 2008 and became the spark that helped ignite a late-season dash to the NCAA Tournament.

He averaged 9.7 points and 7.0 rebounds down the stretch and enters the 2008-09 campaign as one of the Wildcats' unquestioned leaders.

Through all the ups and downs he remained a positive, solid contributor even when his game day minutes might not have reflected it.

"Dwayne was always a leader off the court and in the locker room," states Wright. "As he gained confidence personally as a player it was almost as if everything fell into place for the team because everyone wanted him to be in that position."

The countdown for the new season is underway. Full practices begin in less than a month and the annual kickoff party, "Hoops Mania" is set for Oct. 24 in the Pavilion. One of the ways Anderson says he recognizes the onset is in the demeanor of his head coach.

"We can tell when the season is approaching just by how Coach Wright is," says Anderson. "As soon as the season gets here, it's like he can't slow down. Everything is fast paced - you can see it in the way he walks. He has that extra jump in his step."

Before moving on to the new season, Anderson and his teammates have taken much time to reflect how the last one ended. For all of the late-year achievement, there was a sense of opportunity lost in Villanova's 72-56 loss to Kansas in Detroit. Wright spoke at length to his troops in the Ford Field locker room after the contest had concluded.

"He wanted us to digest that feeling," Anderson says.

A few days after the team returned to the Davis Center, the team watched the game again without Wright present.

"You could feel the passion and the hurt," Anderson notes. "We can still feel it to this day and I think that's really going to push us."

To anyone who caught a glimpse of an open gym session this summer, it's clear that it already has.