Rich Hofmann: Villanova enjoying Fisher's growth spurt heading into NCAA Tournament
NO MATTER how much a coach yells, everybody who has been around college players knows the truth is that you don't tell them. Rather, they tell themselves. They do things in their own time. They make the decisions that matter in their own heads. You beat on them because that's what you do, but the only real progress is progress that begins from within.
Take Corey Fisher.
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"It just
really came down to what I wanted to do," he was saying the other day. As Villanova prepares for another NCAA Tournament, the sophomore guard is its X-factor of a sixth man - two parts energy and one part unpredictability. Fisher has grown into the role this year. He shoots less but makes more of them. He pushes the envelope and sometimes tears it wide open. On a team where Dante Cunningham and Scottie Reynolds are the stars, he is the turbocharger.
And Fisher was saying: "A lot of kids, you can tell them to do something but they really don't want to do it. It has to come from inside you, and I had something inside me, it had me fighting. I just wanted to do it.
"I just feel good now. I started last summer with losing weight. I was already quick but in this league, in this country, there are a thousand guys who are quicker than me or as quick as I am. So I had to get faster, stronger. Right now, I weigh 192 - I lost 10 or 12 pounds. I'm thinner, 6 percent body fat. I just feel a lot better on the court. Last year, I'd be tired. This year, I can play nonstop, extended minutes. It's just a great feeling.
"I was eating bad food - a lot of young guys do that. But I can't remember the last time I ate at McDonald's. I'm eating a lot of salad, drinking a lot of water, just eating healthy stuff. And I feel great.
"For me to be the player I wanted to be, to play the way I've been playing, I think I had to lose weight," he said. "I had to get stronger. I had to eat better. I had to come into the gym and shoot more. I had to take the game a little more seriously. I love the game - I'm doing something that I love - but I needed to do more to succeed."
He sounds like a kid, and he is a kid with an NBA dream. That's the New York in him, in his voice, in that dream. There is an audacity to the whole thing, but it's funny. You ask his coach, Jay Wright, about the progress that Fisher has made this season and you don't hear about audacity.
"Believe it or not, for a kid from the Bronx and a high school All-American from St. Pat's [in Elizabeth, N.J.], confidence," Wright said, when asked about the difference between this year and last. "When he came in as a freshman, I was shocked at how coachable he was but how insecure he was as a player. Usually, those kids from the Bronx, they're not going to respond to everything you say but they're not going to lose their confidence, either. He's the opposite: wide-eyed, whatever you tell him, he just wants to please the coach. Randy Foye was that way. But he could lose confidence if you lost confidence in him.
"I think, this year, he's learned that we have great confidence in him. His idea of confidence is whether he started or not. I think he learned that, hey, if you put me in there at the end of the game and you're running plays for me and if I'm playing 27 minutes a game, you've got confidence in me. And once he knew that we all had confidence in him, he took his game to another level. We want to make sure, going into this tournament, that he's playing with great confidence."
Sitting there, talking to him, Fisher sounds just fine. Sitting there and playing in the tournament are two different animals, of course. But having been to the Sweet 16 as a freshman, playing well sometimes and erratically other times, he seems sure that the experience will help him. He says the memories are indelible, that, "I'll tell my kids about winning that game" against fifth-seeded Clemson in last year's first round.
"I'm not really nervous," he said. "You don't listen to it but you hear people back home, they put a lot of pressure on you: 'Oh, you're a three seed. You have to do this, you have to do that.' I don't care. It's just a wonderful time.
"I'm playing the game, having more fun [this year]. If we're down by one with a minute to go and I'm out there, I just feel the energy from my teammates and my coaches. It's just a great feeling. I don't call anything pressure anymore. It's just fun."
The Louisville game in the Big East Tournament, while maybe not definitive, was nonetheless instructive. It was a night when Fisher showed what can still be a raw, visceral game - a lot of energy and a lot of inconsistency.
As Wright said: "In the Louisville game, in the first half, we don't have a lead if it's not for him. But he had seven turnovers, too. Right now, he can break the game open and he can make some mistakes that can cost you, too. But I like the percentages right now. I like that he's breaking it open more than he's hurting you. I'm willing to play aggressively. He's a sophomore and I don't want to hold him back at all."
The coach would have a hard time with that. Fisher, it seems, has made up his mind. *
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