Villanova’s Dwayne Anderson knows some things. He’ll make his mark with the stuff he doesn’t yet. | Mike Sielski
Once, he was the last guy Jay Wright thought would become a head coach. Now Anderson has spent the years since figuring out everything, including himself.
Some things you just know. Some things you have to learn. Dwayne Anderson always knew he wanted to be a coach, even when he was playing professional basketball in Germany for a few years, first for BG Gottingen, then for Dirk Nowitzki’s old club, S. Oliver Baskets. A pro career in Europe was just something for him to do, the next necessary stage in his career before he moved on and began coaching. But one aspect of German life opened his eyes: the food. He’d always been a finicky eater. He couldn’t be there.
“Doner kebabs were an interesting concept to me,” he said, referring to the cones of rotisserie-cooked meat shaved and sold at restaurants and by street vendors. “I forget why. As you get older, you try new things. Your taste buds change. I tried it. I couldn’t believe it. Just the fact that the meat is hanging up on that thing just blows my mind.”
Always a captain
Some things you just know. Some things you have to learn. Every level of basketball, biddy-ball in Washington, high school, Anderson was always a captain, and all his coaches told him, when you’re done playing, you’ll be a coach. All of them except one.
“I never thought Dwayne Anderson would be a coach,” Jay Wright was saying Tuesday.
Villanova had just finished practicing at the Finneran Pavilion before a campus sendoff, a bus ride to the airport, and a flight to San Antonio for Thursday night’s Sweet 16 matchup against Michigan. Anderson had been Wright’s director of basketball operations for three years before becoming one of Wright’s assistants last June. He was a captain — always a captain, remember — of Wright’s first Final Four team, in 2009. But “his first couple of years, he was always respectful, but he was very hard-headed,” Wright said. “He had his way of doing things on the court.”
Really?
“Oh, definitely,” said Anderson, who’ll turn 36 in June. “The player I became is because of the hard conversations and pushing me – pretty much telling me I was not good enough. I needed that button pushed. I needed to have that different conversation, and I think all these players do because you have a max that you don’t understand, and coaches have coached a lot of great players. So they have to push you and hit certain buttons, and then when you finally get to the other side, you realize, ‘Oh, wow. I did need that.’ ”
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There’s one play that stands out from Anderson’s career at Villanova: Round of 32 in 2009, at the Wachovia Center (now the Wells Fargo Center), Wildcats up 22 points on UCLA with five minutes left in regulation, embarrassing the Bruins. Then Anderson embarrasses them further, chases down Darren Collison from behind on a fast break, knocks the ball out of his hands for a steal. Go find the play on YouTube. The fan who posted it there wrote, THIS is what Villanova basketball is all about!
Old-school Big East memories
Some things you just know. Some things you have to learn. Anderson started his playing career with Villanova in 2005. For his four years, the Wildcats were in the Big East. Not this Big East. The previous Big East, with Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Louisville, with West Virginia and Notre Dame. Big schools with big football money. A league with a reputation its teams were happy to uphold.
“The Big East now is amazing,” he said. “But I just take pride in the old-school Big East, the toughness, no fouls. I take pride in playing in that era.”
During Villanova’s first-round victory over Delaware last week, Jermaine Samuels launched himself toward the Wildcats’ bench, trying to save a ball from going out of bounds. He crashed into Anderson, giving him a bloody nose. It was bad enough that Anderson had to be escorted to the locker room to get patched up.
He’s still a little congested and sore, but it’s a small price to pay for the chance to remind the team of how things were when he played.
“I’d do it again,” he said. “I played in the old-school Big East. This is nothing.”
Consistency pays
Some things you just know. Some things you have to learn. Anderson met his wife, Lindsay, outside a dorm when they were students at Villanova. He saw her and told his friend and teammate Dante Cunningham that he was going to marry her, even though he’d never had a conversation with her. They were both athletes; she was on the diving team. Maybe it was an in.
“Went up and tried to talk to her, and she completely shot me down,” he said. “I had to chase her for two years.”
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What changed her mind?
“I guess my consistency.”
They have two sons. Dash is 6. The younger one, Nova, is 4. You can guess where he got his name.
Not every program is Villanova
Some things you just know. Some things you have to learn. “He’s outstanding,” Wright said. “He’s going to be an incredible head coach.”
Will he? Maybe. Not every program has Villanova’s resources, Villanova’s advantages. The same goes for any candidate coming up under Wright. Another berth in the Elite Eight or the Final Four gets Dwayne Anderson closer to his goal, to that shot he has wanted his entire life. Some things you just know. Some things … you just have to take your chances.
Event description: While Villanova heads to San Antonio for the tournament’s South Regional, the East Regional is coming to Philly and The Inquirer will be in both locations every step of the way. Join college hoops experts Mike Jensen and Mike Sielski as they offer an insider’s look at Villanova’s tournament run and break down the rest of the field during a special edition of Gameday Central. Tune in Friday, March 25 at 2:15 PM as Jensen and Sielski chat with Inquirer columnist David Murphy on Inquirer LIVE.