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.

"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.