"It's the same for everybody. But it [stunk], actually."
Dwayne Anderson at least saw one advantage.
"I remember when we first walked in for practice, everyone just looked around," he explained. "It's crazy. It's a stadium. So many seats. It's like a boxing ring, where they lift you up. That's the atmosphere. It's different. Some probably won't like it.
"[The locker-room walk] was a bit of a stretch. Definitely too long. But you don't even have to stretch when you get to the floor. That's the warmup."
Head man Jay Wright sees the surroundings as a necessary evil.
"The court thing was strange," he admitted. "I didn't like it as a coach. You feel like you're standing up there, on a Broadway stage, and you're not in the play. You're just in the middle of it. I think we'll be more prepared this time.
"It's funny. They talk to you about [using a stool]. You've got a choice. I don't sit down anyway. I'll tell you, it's tough not being able to talk to your team. I talk to them all the time. And some of the guys sitting behind our bench heard some of the things I said, which I really didn't want. So I've learned that, too.
"It's a little rough, but you know what? If you don't have 70,000 people watching you, you don't have those things. That's pretty cool. So if we've got to put up with that to play in front of 70,000, we'll take that."
Puerto Rico Tip-Off
Villanova has been selected to play in the third annual O'Reilly Auto Parts Puerto Rico Tip-Off Nov. 19-22 at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico, in the cosmopolitan Hato Rey district of San Juan. The field will include UAB, Dayton, George Mason, Georgia Tech, Indiana and Kansas State, with the eighth team to be announced later. *
