This walk-on has a voice at Villanova. You can hear him loud and clear at games.

More than an hour before Villanova and Georgetown tipped off in an early January Big East game, Capital One Arena in Washington was fairly quiet. There was some music playing while players on both teams shot around and worked on individual drills, but the arena was mostly empty.

On the Villanova end of the floor, sophomore reserve forward Trey Patterson was the only scholarship player shooting at one point, the rest of his teammates back in the locker room preparing for what would be a Villanova win.

All of them, except Collin O’Toole, a walk-on. Things are never really quiet when O’Toole is around and there is work to be done.

“Let’s go!” O’Toole yelled as Patterson put shots up. “Do what we do! Forty minutes, blue!”

He was essentially talking to one player, but it didn’t matter. It was the same voice and same energy then as it was more than an hour later when the ball was tipped.

“That’s just what we do,” O’Toole said. “It’s almost like a habit at this point. When someone is there with you, you just have to try to motivate them and share energy and get them ready.

“Really, it’s just trying to share energy through yelling to get their nervous system going.”

It might get their nervous system going, but it takes a toll on his voice.

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“You just kind of get used to it,” O’Toole said. “It’s kind of weird. It’s almost like my body and voice is almost trained. It’ll be gone today and then come back. It’s gone the day after and comes back. It’s almost like it knows what it’s doing.”

He takes a steady dose of cough drops and lozenges, too, about 30 a week, he estimated.

If you’ve been at a Villanova game this season, you’ve probably heard the hoarse voice on the bench or during warmups. To this ‘Nova team, those are just the dulcet sounds of O’Toole, the lone walk-on and loudest person in a Wildcats uniform, a coach’s son who hopes his time at Villanova will prepare him for a coaching future of his own.

So, why is O’Toole here at Villanova and not in Pittsburgh, where his father, Tim, is the associate head coach on Jeff Capel’s staff?

Beyond the obvious nepotism angle — “I wanted to try to go out on my own and learn something for myself,” the player said — Villanova had been a draw for O’Toole for years. Even when he was a 12-year-old living in California while Tim was on the staff at Stanford (before he coached at Cal), O’Toole watched from afar. For his younger years, he was closer, as the family lived in the northeast while Tim was the head coach at Fairfield while Jay Wright was building Villanova into a national power.

He liked what he heard about the culture, the coaching, and how tight-knit the players were. Then, when he was accepted into the university and visited, he “fell in love.”

O’Toole spent last season, his freshman year, as a practice player and joined the active roster this season.

College is supposed to be what prepares a student for their future as it is, but for O’Toole, who wants to be a coach, being a Villanova walk-on is like having the best possible internship. He’s basically just a player-coach who doesn’t play. His duties include mastering the scouting report, knowing what Villanova’s next opponent is going to do so he can run it against his teammates in practice. He has to be a positive force in the locker room.

“He knows everything we do,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said. “We have a saying that everyone’s role is different, but everyone’s status is the same. No matter who you are in the program, what you do for us is extremely important.”

O’Toole has to be available, sometimes at off hours. O’Toole said he worked a lot this summer with Eric Dixon, who would ask him to come to the gym and rebound for him. That would happen from, say, 9 to 10 p.m., then Brandon Slater would shoot from 10:30 to 11:30. More recently, he has helped Justin Moore work out on his road to recovery from Achilles surgery in March.

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Slater said he can see the coach’s son side of O’Toole in “the way he just demands respect from you.”

Slater wanted to make one thing clear, too, when talking about O’Toole: “He’s a really good basketball player.” Slater pointed to a recent practice for proof. There are people at Villanova’s practices tasked with tracking stats, and one day O’Toole had more rebounds during a practice than anyone else. O’Toole is listed at 6-foot-1.

Just another example of a coach’s son, Slater said.

“He knows how to move his body and get into spots,” Slater said. “The things he says and the words he uses. He’ll pull me aside and tell me what happened on a play [if] I didn’t see that on that play.”

The coach’s son comes out in the voice, too. O’Toole said his father is “out-of-his-mind nuts, one of the most passionate guys I know.”

Like father, like son.

O’Toole doesn’t have to look very far both physically and into the future to see how his current role is a training ground for what could be next.

On Villanova’s bench right now are a few people who took his path, including video coordinator Tim Saunders and graduate manager Kevin Voigt.

“I think being here is giving me an advantage and that’s part of the reason why I wanted to be here so bad,” O’Toole said.

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There are others who weren’t walk-ons who went from a Villanova uniform to the Villanova bench, like Baker Dunleavy, now the head coach at Quinnipiac, and current assistants Mike Nardi and Dwayne Anderson.

For O’Toole and the others before him, however, it’s a bit different. Nardi and Anderson helped their teams reach Elite Eights and Final Fours, respectively. Success for O’Toole isn’t necessarily measured the same. O’Toole has checked into one game this season: the final seconds of a blowout win over Boston College in December.

“You’ve got to really put it into perspective,” Slater said. “This guy is sacrificing his life and time with his family, friends, and loved ones to be with us. He came back to practice with us during Christmas. He’s here during the break. He’s here with us grinding. And on top of that, he probably won’t get in.”

It’s a reality he chose. He watched some of his father’s teams when he was younger, and was always drawn to the role players and walk-ons, he said. In high school, playing at Pittsburgh Central Catholic and then at St. Thomas More School in Connecticut, he loved being the energy guy above all else.

“Everyone is a competitor,” O’Toole said. “Obviously they would love to play, but I have no issue finding motivation to do my job every day, and I love it.”

Don’t believe him? Just listen and watch. It won’t be hard to see or hear.